


This far but no further

by niniblack



Series: Never was the fantasy [1]
Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Ableism, Alcoholism, Angst, Erik Logic Is The Best Logic, Fluff, Happy Ending, Honestly Charles What Are You Thinking, Kid Fic, M/M, Mild Domestic Violence, Miscarriage, Mpreg, canon compliant (if you squint), doing all of these things while pregnant and caring for a child, medical knowledge from wikipedia, serum/drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-11 23:55:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4457366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/niniblack/pseuds/niniblack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Lorna, this is Erik. Can you say hi?”</p><p>Lorna peeks out at him and mumbles, “Hi.”</p><p>“She’s cute,” Erik comments. </p><p><i>I know</i>, Charles thinks. <i>She looks like you.</i></p><p>Or: the one where Charles doesn’t tell Erik that joining the mile high club resulted in a baby.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hank, part one

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for a [prompt on the kink meme](http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/11912.html?thread=22747272#t22747272).
> 
> Title is from Backdrifts by Radiohead. I still can't believe that the first fic I'm posting in this fandom is mpreg.

By the time they get off the beach and to a hospital, Charles has been unconscious for over three hours and bleeding out into the sand for closer to six and there's just _so much_ blood. Hank doesn't think he's ever seen someone bleed that much and somehow still be alive.

But Charles _is_ alive. He's never going to walk again, but he's alive. Erik and Raven are gone but no one is dead and everything else they can deal with, surely.

Moira, who's been at the hospital dealing with all the paperwork, comes back to the house to tell them that the doctor thinks Charles had a miscarriage in addition to the incomplete spinal injury.

She doesn't look like she believes the words coming out of her own mouth.

Alex is the first one to speak, summing up the general sentiment with, "The fuck?"

Which makes Hank think, _well if there was a miscarriage then there was a fetus, or possibly still a zygote but would a miscarriage at that stage even be called such? Perhaps it's a secondary mutation, similar to Raven's appearance being independent of her ability to transform her body--though that hypothesis really must be reconsidered based on the evidence from my own failed attempt to separate the appearance of my feet from my enhanced strength, speed, and intelligence--and anyway if there was a fetus to miscarry then there must have been fucking at some point, presumably with a man if Charles is the one who became pregnant--best not to think of that too closely, really--but who would Charles--_

"Oh," Hank says. _Erik,_ he thinks, but carefully doesn't say aloud.

\---

Hank sneaks into the hospital after hours to see Charles. "They told you?" he asks, after Charles stops him from stammering trying to think of how to say it.

The sound Charles makes is close to a scoff. "They don't talk to me," he says. "Losing my legs apparently means I’ve lost my brain as well.” After a moment of tense silence, he sighs. “They don't really have to talk, I suppose." He waves a hand vaguely in the direction of his head. His lower arms are the only part of his body not held in traction after the last surgery. Hank is starting to feel claustrophobic just being in the same room, and wonders if Charles is projecting his feelings.

"Oh, well. We can of course find out more once you're home, about the cause of, um..." Hank can't bring himself to say miscarriage or pregnancy or fetus to Charles' face. "But it might be best if--"

"I need to wipe their memories," Charles finishes.

Hank nods.

"I can't do it like this. The narcotics... It's not working right now."

"When they send you home, then," Hank says.

Charles states at the ceiling. "Sure. When."

When is two months and three surgeries later. Charles is still on painkillers, even if they're not as strong, and he accidentally wipes any memory of his existence from the minds of the doctors and staff, instead of just the part about his impossible male pregnancy.

"Oops," he says, when he admits this to the others. He waits until he's off the medication before suppressing Moira's memories.

After she's gone, Hank tries to reiterate his offer to help find out exactly what the nature of this secondary mutation is. Charles tells him that he has no secondary mutation and the whole thing was probably just a doctor with an overactive imagination. There's nothing to study. Hank should really just forget about it.

Hank doesn’t forget, of course. He’s got an eidetic memory and he’s already seen the lab reports and medical charts. But they never talk about it again.

\---  


Charles decides he wants to turn the mansion into a school for mutants. A safe place for kids with nowhere to go. No one says Raven's name, but her influence hangs over the idea like a ghost.

"You want us to teach?" Sean asks. "You and Hank, maybe, you've got degrees and shit, but I didn't even finish my freshman year of college."

"I've only got a GED," Alex adds. "Because they make you finish it in prison."

"Well," Charles bites his lip. "Maybe nothing quite so formal as teaching school subjects. At least not at first. But you are both well versed in learning to control your mutations and that experience would be invaluable to helping others do the same."

"We'll need Cerebro," Hank says. The plans are already swirling in his mind. There's all that space in the basement, old bomb shelters and labs. He could build it there. The first design he'd built at the CIA had been constrained by the size of the dome he'd had available, but if he converted the largest of the bomb shelters he could potentially increase the range across the entire planet.

They throw themselves into the planning and recruitment. They mostly find older teenagers who've manifested during puberty and can't control their powers. Most of the kids have been thrown out of their homes and it's more of a youth halfway house than a school, but it's a start.

Then the draft lottery starts, and Alex is one of the first called. "Fucking December birthday," he says, when he gets the letter.

Charles offers to call in favors, go into the offices and wipe any mention of Alex's name from collective memory, but Alex shakes his head. "You've got to keep the school going. I'm not really good at the planning and teacher stuff anyway, but I might be good at being at being in the army." He grins, trying to reassure them. "I'll be fine. I'll just burn the whole jungle down or something if I need to."

Alex writes occasionally and tells them about other mutants he's met in the army. After the first year the letters stop.

One of the students is called next. Then another. Then Sean gets a call that his younger brother has been drafted, and he takes one of the cars and the money Charles gives him and heads home. He promises to call once he and his brother get to Canada, but they never hear from him.

Charles tries to check on them all with Cerebro, which turns out to be a mistake because diving into the minds of men in a war leaves him shaking with nightmares. "They won't stop," he tells Hank, tears in his eyes and his fingers gripping his hair so hard he's drawing blood. "I can't... It hasn't been like this since I was a child."

Charles self-medicates with alcohol. Hank sends the remaining students home, then throws himself back into the serum he was working on in 1962. He knows what went wrong with it that time, and maybe if he can fix it then he'll be able to help both himself and Charles.

Hank fixes the serum, but once again it only makes things worse.

\---

About three months after they watch Raven and Erik walk--or fly, in Erik’s case--away, Charles comes down with some sort of flu that lingers, but thankfully doesn’t turn into pneumonia. It reminds Hank of when Charles had first come home from the hospital and been almost completely reliant on others for help. It had been rough then, and Charles is no better now about accepting help when he hasn’t made it out of bed and to the toilet in time to puke.

Hank convinces him to come down to Cerebro and look for students. Charles eyes the machine warily, holding the helmet on his lap. “I’m not sure this is the best idea,” he says.

“It’ll be fine,” Hank reassures him. “You’ve just been sick, it doesn’t mean we can’t get started.” He’s rather desperate to get the school back up and running before whatever mood had convinced Charles to stop taking the serum wears off. He seems fine aside from the flu he can’t seem to shake off, but Hank remembers that he’d seemed fine for a long time after Cuba as well. “You promised Logan, remember?”

“I did,” Charles says softly. He frowns, but puts the helmet on and waves to Hank to start it up.

\---

Between cleaning the mansion out, tracking down potential students, and getting the paperwork filed to make the school at least look legitimate, the next couple of months pass quickly.

Hank’s been holed up in his lab for the past week, working on some plans for turning one of the bunkers into a training room for more volatile mutations. Usually Charles leaves him to it, but today he turns up around noon balancing a lunch tray on his lap.

“I brought sandwiches,” Charles says. He’s brought beer as well. Hank hasn’t eaten since dinner last night so he scarfs down one sandwich quickly then downs half the beer before looking up at Charles’ amused expression. Charles pushed the other sandwich towards him as well. “I’m really not very hungry,” he says.

Hank starts on the second one more slowly. “Not that I don’t appreciate the food, but what brings you down here?” he asks.

Charles is studying the clutter on one of the lab tables. “How are the plans for the training room coming along?” he asks.

It’s an obvious stalling tactic, but Hank goes along with it. “Pretty well,” he says. He grabs the blueprints and spreads them out in front of Charles. “I’ve tried to account for several scenarios that would cause enough distress to lose control.”

Charles looks over the plans, nodding along as Hank explains them in more detail. “These look excellent, Hank. A very nice job,” he says.

Hank smiles, but Charles’ attention has drifted back to the other detritus on the table. He picks up a stoppered volumetric flask, tilting it back and forth. Hank reaches forward to snatch it out of his hands. “Don’t shake that,” he tells him. “It might explode.”

“Oh,” Charles says, eyes a bit wider. He smooths his hand down the front of his shirt before reaching for his beer and downing the last of it in one gulp.

Hank waits.

Finally Charles sets the bottle down and says, “Something’s wrong with me.” He looks rueful. “Something more than usual, at any rate.”

“What’s is it?” Hank asks.

It takes a bit before Charles says, “I never actually stopped throwing up after that flu, if it even was the flu. And despite throwing up every other day I’ve somehow gained 20 pounds.” Charles looks resigned as he pulls his shirt up, revealing his clearly distended stomach.

Hank’s first thought is, _he looks pregnant,_ and following quickly on it’s heels is the memory from ten years ago, of Moira telling them Charles had miscarried after being shot on the beach. But aside from the medical reports they'd stolen from the hospital, this is the first time Hank's been confronted with physical proof that Charles has the ability to become pregnant.

Hank’s still staring in disbelief when Charles tugs shirt back down. “So, um…” Charles says. “I don’t know what…” he trails off again. After a long silence he demands, “Say something, would you?”

“Um,” Hank says. He swallows hard and reaches for what’s left of his beer, downing it in one gulp. Charles really should have brought something stronger.

“Oh don’t worry, I’m saving the good stuff for after this conversation,” Charles says.

Hank reaches for the only thing that makes sense in this situation, science. “Actually there have been studies recently on the negative effect of alcohol on a fetus…” The look on Charles’ face stops him from continuing. “But we can, um, run some tests. Make sure it’s… uh…”

Charles leans forward, resting his elbows on his thighs and burying his face behind his hands. His hair swings forward, blocking his expression entirely from Hank. Hank reaches over to pat him on the back then leaves his hand there. “We’ll figure it out,” he promises. “It could be something else. It could be a tumor.”

Charles looks up at him incredulously. “Really?”

“It could. It's scientifically possible,” Hank insists. Unlike male pregnancy, he doesn't say.

\---

Hank takes samples and runs tests and when he’s done, he’s 100 percent sure that Charles is pregnant. He finds Charles sitting in the living room on the first floor, watching television. The fact that Charles has the tv on is odd enough, since he usually reads instead, but then Hank sees the bottle of whiskey. Charles has skipped using a glass and is drinking straight from the bottle.

Hank sits down next to him on the couch.

“Well?” Charles asks.

“You’re definitely pregnant,” Hank says. Charles nods and takes a swig from the bottle. “We’ll have to get an ultrasound machine to find out how far along.”

Charles starts counting on his fingers, then says, “Five months, thereabouts." He takes another drink before offering the bottle to Hank. “I told you I was saving the good stuff. My stepfather had this one hidden in his study and I’ve been waiting for the right occasion. I think being pregnant qualifies.”

Hank reaches over and takes the bottle of whiskey, setting it on the end table. Then he reconsiders and takes a drink himself. It’s smooth, obviously expensive, and it warms it’s way through his body. He pretends it gives him strength as he asks, “So, who was it?”

Charles shakes his head and starts laughing, a bit hysterically. “You’re really asking?”

“Well, you don’t have to tell me,” Hank says, striving for calm. He already knows it had to have been a man, logically.

“I just thought it was obvious,” Charles says, taking a deep breath to calm himself.

Hank thinks back to what they were doing five months ago, because if Charles had been seeing anyone then he hadn’t know about it and-- “Oh,” Hank says. _Erik_ , he thinks. Then, “Wait, really? _Again?_ ”

Charles doesn’t answer, and Hank’s mind is reeling now. “When did you even… Logan and I were with you both the whole time.” They’d gotten to Paris the night before the Accords and Hank had shared a hotel room with Charles. He literally can’t think of a single moment that Erik and Charles had been alone.

Charles still doesn’t say anything, leaving Hank to realize, “On the _plane?_ I was five feet away!”

“I do realize that it was mistake, Hank,” Charles says, voice tight.

“Obviously,” Hank says.

Charles looks away, staring back at the television.

Hank swallows hard and forces himself to calm down. Getting angry doesn’t do any good, although the knowledge that Charles had fucked Erik not even six hours after breaking him out of prison makes Hank want to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. It’s _Erik_. Nothing good has ever come from situations involving Erik and the fiascos in Paris and Washington were just further proof of that.

“What do you want to do?” Hank finally asks.

“Do?” Charles turns to look at him again.

“About the… fetus.”

“I don’t know.” Charles buries his face in his hands again. “Am I supposed to know?”

“I’ll get an ultrasound machine tomorrow. It might not be too late to get rid of it, and it is legal now.”

Charles rests one hand against his stomach for a moment, then says, “I’m going to bed.” He transfers himself to the chair and grabs the bottle of whiskey off the table as he goes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first studies on the effects of alcohol during pregnancy were published in the early 70s. Same for Roe v. Wade, which was decided in '73.


	2. Charles, part one

Hank has managed to procure an ultrasound machine from somewhere, and insists he knows how to work it. Charles doesn't ask where and doesn't look into his mind to find out, deciding that he'd really rather not know.

Once they've got Charles up onto one of the exam tables in the lab, Hank squirts cold jelly onto his stomach and starts pressing hard with the wand attached to the machine. Charles stares at the ceiling, trying very hard not to think about why they're doing this. He's been ignoring the steadily growing problem for months, literally. It wasn't until three days ago when his pants wouldn't button anymore that he finally admitted to himself what he'd already known was wrong. He can still remember the incredulous doctors in the hospital after Cuba, even if they don't remember him at all.

"There it is," Hank says, startling Charles from his thoughts. He turns the screen around so Charles can see it. It looks like a bunch of black and white blobs to Charles. "Right there," he points to one of the white blobs. 

Charles squints, and guesses that it could be a head. Maybe. Then he sees one of the blobs move, opening and closing a fist, and something inside him clenches up.

"I should be able to..." Hank moved the wand, then fiddles with something on the machine, and then there's a steady _whomp whomp_ noise. "That's the heartbeat," he says.

Charles doesn't say anything, still staring at the tiny fist and what he thinks might be a foot and the part that is definitely a head, now that he knows what he’s looking at.

"Charles?" Hank prompts. "Are you okay?"

Charles just nods.

\---

Charles wakes up in the wee hours of the morning with a pounding headache. He tries to sit up, but with his ever expanding stomach he can’t even catch his breath, much less lift himself up and into his chair. He flops back down onto the pillow, cringing when he realizes he’s sweat through his pajamas. Even pushing the blankets down as far as possible doesn’t do anything to alleviate the over-heated and generally awful feeling that’s come over him.

Charles lays there for awhile miserably, trying to see if it will pass, before admitting defeat and reaching out for Hank’s mind. He has to wake him up, but Hank comes running in a few minutes later.

“What’s wrong?”

“I can’t…” Charles trails off, breathless even from the attempt to talk. _I don’t know_ , he tells Hank telepathically. _I can’t breathe._

Hank’s hand is around his wrist, checking his pulse. “I’ll be right back,” he says.

Charles can’t do anything but watch him go and try to breath. In, out, in, out. His headache is making the room spin a bit.

Hank returns with an oxygen tank and presses the hose under Charles’ nose. “Just relax,” he says. “Deep breaths.” He’s also brought a blood pressure cuff that he wraps around Charles’ arm.

Charles closes his eyes and concentrates on taking deep breaths.

“I think it’s autonomic dysreflexia,” Hank says. “Your blood pressure’s high, but your heart rate is only at 40. We need to get you off your back.” He starts pulling Charles up into a sitting position, then maneuvers him towards the edge of the bed, legs dangling towards the floor.

Charles lets himself be manhandled. After sitting up, leaning heavily against Hank, for a few minutes he starts to feel like he can breath again. “I don’t usually have problems with that,” he says. He knows what it is, of course, because they’d gone over it in depth during his rehab ten years ago, but he’s never had it happen before.

“It’s the pregnancy,” Hank explains. “From what I read it’s a common complication for wo--patients who become pregnant after a spinal cord injury. The baby is pushing on organs and skin below the injury and causing--”

“How do I make it stop?” Charles interrupts. He appreciates Hank's incredibly vast knowledge on just about any science or engineering related topic one can think of, but sometimes he just wishes Hank wouldn't shift into lecture mode at every question.

“Do you feel okay to sit up on your own?” Hank asks, instead of answering. “I need to get something to lower your blood pressure. If it gets worse it can cause fetal hypoxia.”

Charles nods, gripping the edge of the bed with both hands. Hank hurries back out the door, leaving Charles nothing to do but continue trying to catch his breath and think about the baby slowly suffocating inside him. _The baby’s fine_ , he insists to himself. Hank will bring back something to fix the high blood pressure and Charles will get his breathing under control and this will stop and the baby will be fine. The baby’s been fine for seven months now, it will be fine for another two.

Hank comes back with a pill that he tells Charles to put under his tongue. They sit there for another thirty minutes, Charles slumped against Hank's side and Hank rubbing one hand up and down between Charles' shoulder blades, until Charles can tell that the medicine is working. He sits up straighter, reaching up to remove the oxygen tube.

“Leave that,” Hank says. “Are you feeling better?”

“Headache hasn’t gone away, but yes.” He sighs, leaning forward further and rubbing at his temples. Most of his headaches focus on those areas, but this one feels like it’s encasing his entire skull. “What do I have to do to make sure this doesn’t happen again?”

Hank frowns. “I’m not sure there’s anything you can do. Avoid sitting or lying in certain positions, or shift if you feel it coming on. We’ll have to make sure to use anesthesia during labor, to prevent it then.”

“That’s it?” Charles asks. “There’s nothing else to help?”

“Not that I’m aware of. I can look into it further, but the baby is going to keep pushing against all your internal organs and that’s only to get worse,” Hank says.

“What happens to the baby if it happens again?”

Hank pulls his glasses off and wipes them on the hem of his t-shirt, stalling. “It could cause fetal hypoxia, like I said.”

“And?”

“And that could lead to an increased risk of damage to the central nervous system,” Hank says.

“And death,” Charles says, sick of avoiding it. “You forgot that one.”

“We can monitor things.”

“I need a shower,” Charles says, ending the conversation. His sweat soaked pajamas have become cold and clammy against his skin.

“Do you need--”

“I can do it,” Charles says sharply, reaching for his chair to pull it closer. He hasn’t needed help to bathe since rehab and he’s not going to start now. Hank still hovers as he gets into the chair and doesn’t stop until Charles shuts the bathroom door in his face.

He comes to a decision while sitting underneath the shower spray. Some things are worth the sacrifice, and he’d decided this baby was worth it the first time he'd seen the ultrasound. He's already lost-- Charles cuts off his own train of thought. He's not losing this baby. Not now. Not when he's been trying so hard to do this right. He's been following every one of Hank's recommendations, from horse-sized prenatal vitamins all the way to not drinking any alcohol, and he'll be damned if he loses this baby now.

The next day he asks Hank for the serum again.

\---

Charles has to stop taking the serum before the baby's born, because he has to make the surgeon and nurse and anesthesiologist think it's normal to perform a cesarian section on a man, and then make them forget the entire thing. He and Hank decide that two weeks before what they think the due date is should be sufficient, but then Charles goes into labor a month early and the entire plan is shot to hell. Waiting for the serum to wear off enough to control the surgeon is agony. The baby is trying to come out but there's no where to _go_.

Once it's over and he wakes up, Hank hands him the baby.

"It's a girl," Hank says. "And I'm pretty sure she's a mutant."

Charles swallows hard, unable to look away from her face. "The green hair was a clue," he says. She actually has quite a bit of hair--Charles had thought babies were always bald at first--and all of it is bright green.

Hank smiles. "She pretty cute, for a newborn that is."

Charles strokes her cheek with a fingertip, and she blinks her eyes open at him for a moment, before closing them again and waving a fist in the air. She's tiny, with tiny fingers and a tiny nose and Charles has never seen anyone so perfect.

"Did you have a name picked out?" Hank asks.

Charles nods. He has, admittedly, avoided thinking about names until the last minute, but this one just feels right. "Lorna."

Hank repeats it, then says, "It's pretty." He leans over and brushes a hand over her hair, making her squint and wave her fist again.

Charles catches her hand with his, and she wraps a tiny death grip around his finger.

\---

Someone's crying. It's on the edge of Charles' awareness, dulled by the sensation of the serum working its way through his body. He tries to ignore it, but it itches at him, scratching at his nerves insistently. He's supposed to do something when there's crying. What is he supposed to do? He's supposed to do a lot of things, he just can't remember what they are all at the moment.

The next thing he registers is that the crying is louder, and there's shouting to go along with it. He opens his eyes to see Hank standing in front of him, blue and spitting with rage.

As soon as he sees that Charles is awake his voice becomes quieter, but if anything that's even more frightening. "What the fuck are you doing?" he asks, lips pulled back into a snarl.

In his arms Lorna, eight months old now, is screaming and pushing her tiny fists against his chest, straining to get away.

"Give her to me," Charles says, reaching forward.

Hank pulls back, cradling one hand against Lorna's head and holding her closer. "How long did you lay here ignoring her crying? She was screaming her head off when I got home."

"She was taking a nap," Charles says defensively. "She can't have woken up that long ago." _You know that's wrong_ , some part of his brain says. He'd heard her crying, or he thinks he did. He can't be sure. The serum always dulls everything until he can't remember why anything was wrong at all. The feeling has settled somewhat, but his veins are still humming. It'll take another half hour before he's back to normal.

Charles reaches for Lorna again. "Give her to me."

Hank steps back again. Against his chest Lorna's cries have quieted a bit, but now she's making the hiccuping noises that mean she just doesn't have the energy to keep screaming.

"She my daughter, not yours," Charles says, standing up and trying to pry her away Hank. "Let go."

Hank does, finally, and Lorna buries her face against Charles' chest, clutching his robe with both fists. He rubs her back. "Hey, it's okay. You're okay." He keeps murmuring platitudes and rocks her back and forth a bit. He pushes past Hank but nearly overbalances and Lorna starts screaming anew. "It's okay," he tells her. "Daddy's just clumsy."

"Daddy's _high_ ," Hank says behind him. He ignores the glare Charles shoots him and continues, "You can't do this when you're taking care of her."

Hank follows Charles into Lorna's nursery, hanging back in the doorway as Charles lays her down on the changing table. "You have to watch her," he says. "What if something had happened? What if she fell or there was a fire or--"

"None of those things happened," Charles says. He curses as he pricks himself on one of the diaper pins. Lorna's still crying and won't stop kicking.

"They could have," Hank insists. "And you would never have known. You can't--"

"No," Charles cuts him off. "What I can't do is take care of a baby when I'm in that damn wheelchair. If she tried to crawl down the stairs I wouldn't even be able to stop her." He uses that example because it's actually something Lorna has tried, now that she's crawling. She'd made it down three steps of the big central staircase before Charles had caught her.

Hank sighs, and waits until Charles has finished changing Lorna and gone back to soothing her before saying, "At least make sure someone else is watching her before you use the serum. You're no good for at least an hour after a full dose."

"She was taking a nap," Charles says. "She was perfectly safe."

Hank doesn't say anything, just shakes his head and walks back down the hall.

Charles presses a kiss against Lorna's hair as she quiets down. She was perfectly safe. He'll just have to make sure that he times the doses of the serum so he can take them at night from now on, once she's fully asleep. Hank's worrying over nothing.

\---

Charles tries to keep his promise to Logan. He does. He just wished he'd asked a bit more about the people he's supposed to find. A couple of names that are obviously code, similar to Erik’s ridiculous insistence on being called Magneto, doesn't give him much to go on. It doesn’t help that he has to stop taking the serum every time they look for someone new, and most of his thoughts are consumed with worrying about Lorna.

He finds Jean, the woman he'd seen dying in Logan's arms. She's ten, and the youngest at the school. The other children they find are older, mostly teenagers with mutations that are out of control. It's similar to how they first started before the war, when they acted as more of a home for wayward teens. The kids with nowhere to go and no one who cares about them. He finds Alex's younger brother, Scott, who can shoot lasers out of his eyes but has been been blind for the past five years, unable to open his eyes without frying everything in sight, and Hank spends hours in his lab trying to find a material that neutralizes them. They can help these kids, Charles decides. Even if it’s not perfect, they’re helping.

Most of the kids they find just want to be normal, and Charles and Hank do their best to help.

Charles remembers Logan telling him that his best would be enough. He wishes that Logan had told him what his best actually looked like, since Charles doubts that it’s telling children how amazing their mutations are, while suppressing his own because he’s terrified of not being able to take care of his daughter without the serum.

He also wishes Logan had mentioned the part about Lorna existing, but then he thinks that if Logan hadn't come to make him break Erik out of prison, then they wouldn't have fucked on the plane and there would be no Lorna. Then he tries to stop thinking about it, because he's a geneticist not a theoretical physicist.

\---

A couple years later, Charles is chasing Lorna down one of the sidewalks outside Columbia University after leaving the monthly lunch date he and Moira have. She’s running as fast as her little legs will carry her, darting around people’s legs, laughing, and acting like making Charles chase after her on a busy street is _fun_. It probably is for her but it just reminds Charles of why he still uses the serum. The idea of trying to navigate the city streets in a wheelchair is awful enough without adding chasing a toddler to it.

Charles has just about reached her when someone else grabs her under the arms and picks her up. Charles is already saying, “Give her here,” before he’s fully come to a stop, hands reaching out to take her from the stranger.

His eyes meet Erik’s, and Charles finds himself struggling to breathe.

Erik raises his eyebrows. “Wayward student?” he asks, holding Lorna out towards Charles.

She dives back into Charles’ arms with a delighted squeal, one foot kicking into his side hard enough to make him grunt in pain. He adjusts his hold on her until she’s propped on his hip.

“I didn’t expect to run into you here, old friend” Erik adds, when Charles doesn’t say anything.

“Likewise,” Charles says dryly. He hasn’t seen Erik in over four years, aside from the mugshot that gets used in the news. His hair is a bit longer but otherwise he hasn’t changed. Charles isn’t sure why he’d expected him to. Erik is one of the few things that has remained consistent for the past decade and a half, whether he’s in prison or not. Charles’ entire life, on the other hand, keeps getting flipped upside down.

Erik starts to ask what he’s doing in the city, but Lorna interrupts by saying, “Daddy. Daddy.” She tugs on Charles’ shirt collar. “Can we ride the train?”

“Later,” Charles says, reaching up to loosen her hold before she starts choking him.

Erik’s eyebrows are raised again in surprise. “Your daughter?” he asks.

Charles hesitates, but there’s no use for it, since Lorna’s already confirmed the answer. “Yes,” he says. He shifts her weight a bit, tightening his arm around her waist. She’s getting a bit big for being carried, but he’s not setting her down again after the way she ran off.

“I didn’t know you had a daughter,” Erik says. He smiles at Lorna and asks, “What’s your name?”

Faced with Erik looking closely at her, Lorna turns shy and buries her face against Charles’ shoulder. Charles steels himself, then nudges her and gestures towards Erik with his free hand. “Lorna, this is Erik. Can you say hi?”

Lorna peeks out at him and mumbles, “Hi.”

“She’s cute,” Erik comments. 

_I know_ , Charles thinks. _She looks like you._ She has Erik’s eyes, shifting from green to grey to blue depending on the light, and his nose and his expression whenever she doesn't want to do something. Her bright green hair tends to be the feature everyone focuses on, of course. Charles is hoping that it distracts Erik from studying her more closely, even as he reminds himself that there’s no harm in Erik knowing that Lorna is Charles’ daughter. There’s no reason for Erik to even slightly suspect that Lorna is his as well. He doesn’t even know it’s a possibility. Charles’ stomach is twisted up into sick knots for no reason.

Erik shoves his hands in his pockets, glancing around the street. “Do you want to get a drink?” he asks. “We could talk.”

Charles raises an eyebrow. “You want to talk?”

“Yes,” Erik says. He has that same tentatively hopeful expression that Charles’ remembers from when Erik had asked to play chess on the plane to Paris, like he fully expects to be rejected but is going to try anyway. And that had been _after_ the fast, angry sex in the lavatory.

Charles already knows he’s going to say yes. Because while part of him is still angry at Erik, will always be angry at Erik, for everything he’s done and for always walking away and leaving the consequences to everyone else, the other part of him is the part that _hopes_. It’s the part that made him agree to break Erik out of prison in the first place, the part that's trying to build a school for mutant children, the part that kept Lorna. Without that part, Charles wouldn’t have the best things in his life. 

So he says, “Alright,” and let’s Erik lead them towards a nearby diner.

\---

Lorna puts up a fuss when they get to the diner. "Ate lunch," she says. "Train after lunch. You _promised_." She says the last word with the wounded conviction that only a toddler can.

"We're just getting tea," Charles tells her. "Then we can go ride the train, yeah?"

She's still pouting. "Wanna ride the train."

Erik looks amused. "She likes trains, I take it?"

"She likes the subway," Charles says, trying to get her to sit down next to him in the booth. "Even though the subway is _filthy_ ," he turns to emphasize the last word to Lorna.

"It goes _whoosh_ ," she says.

"The subway is more of a death rattle than a whoosh," Erik says.

Lorna waves her arms over her head. "All over it goes _whoosh_."

"We'll go after I talk to Erik,” Charles tells her.

"Don't wanna talk to Erik," she whines, stumbling a bit over his name. "I wanna ride the train."

"Lorna," Charles scolds. "Stop it. We'll ride the train later." Luckily this diner has kids menus. He flips the paper over and hands her the crayons sitting next to the napkins. "Why don't you draw something."

Lorna takes the red crayon in her fist and slashes a line across the paper and onto the tabletop, glaring at Charles as she does it.

Erik's laughing, which isn't helping. Lorna grins at the attention and does it again, nearly breaking the crayon. Charles suddenly feels exasperated but fond of both of them, and has to shake his head to clear the surreal glimpse into what it could be like if Erik knew Lorna was his daughter. It wouldn’t actually be shaking their heads in amusement over Lorna’s antics. It would be a constant fight about mutant rights and who to trust and all the things they’ve both done wrong over the years. And it would probably end with Erik dropping another building on him; maybe a skyscraper this time.

After the waitress takes their orders, Erik leans forward and asks Lorna, "Do you want to see a trick?"

She looks at him warily, then turns to Charles for approval. "It's fine," he says.

Erik floats a couple of the utensils in the air, melts them down, and reshapes them into a subway car. He holds it out to Lorna.

She turns it over in her hands. It’s actually very well made, the little wheels even spin. "It's shiny," she says. "I can do that too."

Charles stomach clenches sickly. Lorna has some form of telekinesis, which is currently wildly unpredictable and limited to metal. Hank thinks that she might be able to manipulate other materials as she gets older, but Charles is fairly certain that she's inherited Erik's powers which will be a dead giveaway.

"Oh?" Erik says.

Lorna holds out her hand and Erik's fork goes flying towards her. Charles snatches it out of the air before it can smack into her face.

Erik looks delighted. "Very good," he tells her. "And nice reflexes," he says to Charles. "She's telekinetic?"

Charles nods. "She doesn't have much control over it yet."

"That's what you're teaching at your school, isn't it? How to control your powers?"

"Yes, for the most part. We also teach math."

“I do have to wonder how you’re finding new students, seeing as you’re walking around again,” Erik says. “I assume you’re without your powers again.”

And there’s what Charles has been waiting for. Erik says it casually, but his disapproval is as obvious now as it was four years ago.

“It’s really none of your business,” Charles says.

“It is if that’s what you’re teaching the next generation. You want everyone to hide themselves.” He gestures to Lorna. “What about your daughter? Going to have her dying her hair and making sure she never uses her powers where the humans can see?” He says _humans_ with a slight sneer.

"Oh no, it would be much better to teach her to hate the rest of the world," Charles retorts. "We're all human, Erik. Having a mutated gene doesn't make us any more of a different species than someone with red hair would be. You keep failing to grasp that concept."

"Because we're not. We're better than they are, Charles. That's the part _you_ fail to understand."

"Scientifically speaking--"

"Fuck science!" Erik interrupts. "You could kill everyone in this room without batting an eyelid if you weren't hiding yourself away, making less of yourself just to fit in with them."

"Of course your first thought is for killing everyone," Charles spits back.

"We shouldn't have to hide," Erik says.

"We don't. We do have be able to control our abilities and live _with_ everyone else safely," Charles says.

"You're not controlling yours, you're trying to get rid of it," Erik says.

Charles is about to keep arguing--no one has ever been able to infuriate him quite as quickly as Erik always has--when Lorna starts tugging on his sleeve. "You're yelling,"  she says.

Charles takes a deep breath. "We're arguing, not yelling."

"You said not to yell at people," she says.

It takes Charles a moment to remember what she's talking about. "I told you not to yell at Scott," he says. "That's different, you were screaming and calling him a butthole." Not that Charles doesn't feel like doing the same to Erik right now.

"He said Barbie was stupid but she's _astronaut_ Barbie so she's not stupid. He's stupid."

"Scott's not stupid," Charles scolds mildly.

Lorna looks unconvinced.

"We'll stop arguing," Erik says. He smiles tightly at Charles.

Charles raises an eyebrow. "Oh? But that's the only thing we're good at."

"Not the only thing," Erik says with a slight smirk.

Charles can feel himself blushing, and looks away. Which means looking at Lorna, the evidence of other things they’re good at. He wipes at a smudge of something sticky on her shirt to avoid looking at Erik.

They actually do manage to talk civilly for another half hour, mostly Erik inquiring about the school while they carefully avoid anything related to Erik's recent activities. Eventually Charles has to take Lorna to the bathroom, and when they get back he hovers at the edge of the table.

"We should really get going," Charles says. "We'll be late getting back."

Erik stands as well, shoving his hands back into his pockets. "Alright then."

Back out on the street, Erik says, "It was good to see you again, old friend."

"Try to stay out of prison," Charles says. "I'm not breaking you out again."

"No promises." Erik grins at him.

Charles thinks briefly that this isn't at all what he'd expected his next meeting with Erik to be like. He'd expected a confrontation, or Erik finding out about Lorna and trying to take her away. Or Erik finding out about Lorna and not caring. Either way, this stilted, slightly awkward conversation wasn't ever among the many scenarios he'd come up with. Charles shakes his head, takes Lorna's hand, says, "Goodbye Erik," and turns and walks away.


	3. Charles, part two

Running into Erik seems to have been some sort of catalyst. A month later Raven turns up at the door. She’s wearing her favorite blonde disguise, the one that Charles had helped her refine when she’d first come to live with him. The one that only modifies her skin and hair color, not her actual face. It's how she looks in most of his memories.

“I need to lie low for a bit,” she says. They’re still standing in the entryway, Raven looking a bit nervous. “I was hoping… Can I stay here?”

Charles wants to ask why. Why does she need to lay low? Why did she come home now? Why did she ever leave? But he just says, “Of course you can. You’re always welcome here, Raven.”

Raven smiles at him and doesn’t tell him to call her Mystique. Charles wants to reach out and pull her into a hug, but it’s been four years since they parted ways in Washington and he’s not sure it would be welcome.

He takes her upstairs. Raven moves to grab the handle of her old bedroom, next door to Charles’ room and now Lorna’s nursery, but Charles stops her. “Um, no. Sorry. You’ll have to take one of the guest rooms I’m afraid.”

“Oh,” she says. “Of course, that makes sense. That you’d move things around, I mean.”

He gestures toward the east wing of the house. “The students rooms are in the other wing. It’s really just Hank and myself over here. I’m sure you’ll see some of them around though.”

“You’re teaching again?”

Charles pushes open the door while he answers. “Yes. There are only a handful of students so far.” He looks around the room, grateful that it’s not too dusty. “Here we are.”

Raven looks around and drops her backpack onto the bed. It appears to be the only luggage she has with her. 

“I have all of your things still,” Charles says, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “If you want them.”

Raven hops onto the bed with a bounce. She smiles at him, already looking more comfortable in the space. “I can look later,” she says. She pats the duvet beside her. “Come on, you have to tell me everything you’ve been up to.”

Charles perches on the edge of the bed, a couple feet of space between them. “I imagine you’re the one with exciting tales of the past couple years. Why the sudden need for a safe house?”

“It’s Erik’s fault,” she says, mouth tightening. Charles suddenly wishes he hadn’t asked. “He asked me to help him break into a research facility. I only said yes because I had already been planning to myself, and as much of an asshole as he is he’s at least useful for breaking and entering.”

“He does has that going for him,” Charles mutters.

Raven smirks and reaches over to nudge at his knee. “Anyway, it’s not a big deal, honest. But I didn't really have anywhere else to go. You really don’t mind me staying here, do you? I can keep out of the way. And no one followed me, I’m sure of that.”

“I already told you, you’re always welcome here. This is your home.” Charles smiles at her, and Raven leans over to wrap her arms around him in a hug. Charles holds on tightly, afraid of her slipping away again.

\---

For the past decade and a half, Charles has thought that having Raven home again would fix things. If she just came home, they could work out their differences and go back to the way it used to be, before the CIA came to ask for their help and proceeded to tip their entire world on its head. Just Charles and Raven against the world.

Now that she's here, he realizes that he has no idea how to talk to her. Or what to talk to her about. They’re different people now, they’ve grown without the other to measure themselves by, and he’s never been reminded of that quite so sharply as when he tells Raven about Lorna. Not because Raven acts differently, but because her reaction is exactly what he always would have expected. Like the years apart have melted away.

“Charles, you dog. Who did you knock up?” Raven asks.

“What?” Charles sputters. “I didn’t--”

“Well clearly you did.” Raven smirks, crossing her arms and giving him the same smug look she used when she teased him as a child. "So who's her mother?"

Charles is used to this question by now and says, "She doesn't have one." Which is the truth, Charles might have given birth to Lorna but that doesn't make him her _mother_ in anything but the most scientific of terms.

The smug look drops off Raven's face. "Oh, Charles. What happened?"

That's a harder question to skirt around. He doesn't want to lie, not to Raven, but he'll do it to protect his daughter. "She left," he says. "She was human and couldn't deal with Lorna being a mutant."

Erik would probably have the opposite problem, but that's just one of the reasons Charles has never tried to tell him.

"So you've just been on your own with a baby?" she asks. "All this time?"

Charles shrugs. "I do have Hank." Hank has been invaluable in helping him, with everything really, from Lorna to the fledgling school. Charles isn't sure what he'd do without him.

Raven reaches forward to pull Charles into a hug. "I wish you'd told me."

The comment rankles, and before Charles can stop himself he says, "And how would I have done that? You didn't exactly leave a forwarding address."

Raven pulls back, looking stung, but she quickly shifts to defensive. "You didn't have trouble finding me before, even on the other side of the globe."

"That was when I could--" Charles does stop himself this time. He doesn't want to get into the same argument with her that he did with Erik. "Never mind. You're here now, yeah?"

"Charles..." Raven trails off uncertainly. "Why have you--"

"Would you like to meet Lorna?" he interrupts, desperate for a way out of this conversation.

This proves a sufficient distraction, and Raven and Lorna spend the rest of the afternoon becoming new best friends.

\---

Charles was right about Raven's return being a catalyst. A week after she comes home, Erik turns up on the doorstep. Unlike Raven, he arrives in the middle of night and has dried blood caked above one temple. Hank gets to the door first and stands in the doorway, arms crossed, refusing to let Erik inside.

“It’s alright, Hank,” Charles says, hurrying down the stairs and still pulling his robe over one shoulder. “Let him in.”

“I really don’t think--”

“I’ll handle it,” Charles says firmly. 

Hank nearly growls, teeth flashing against his dark blue lips. He steps back, but only enough to allow Erik to edge past him.

“Thanks for the warm welcome, Beast,” Erik says.

“What are you doing here?” Charles asks, before Hank can respond. Erik looks like he's been in a fight, bruised and bloodied. He still looks unbearable handsome despite all that. It's annoying, Charles decides. No one should look handsome with a black eye.

Erik's lips quirk a bit as he says, “I need somewhere to lie low.”

Charles crosses his arms over his chest. “Funny, that’s exactly what Raven said.”

“She’s here?” Erik's eyes have widened a bit, but that's the only indication that he's surprised.

“She showed up last week. What the hell did you two get involved in now?” Charles asks. Erik starts to answer, but Charles thinks better of it and holds up a hand to stop him. “You know what, no. I don’t even want to know. Just tell me, did you kill anyone?”

Erik meets his gaze steadily. "I don’t actually enjoy killing people for sport, you know," he says, not actually answering the question.

“No, I don’t know. Since that seems to be what you keep on doing.” Charles glares at him. “I can’t have murderers in the house, Erik. There are children here.”

“I’ll be gone tomorrow then, just give me one night.” Erik holds his hands out, palms up. “I wouldn’t ask if I had any other options.”

“Nice to know I’m your last resort.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” Erik retorts. “Every law enforcement agent in the damn country knows what I look like, and unlike Mystique I can’t just change my face to evade them."

“You should have thought of that before you went around committing capital crimes,” Charles tells him.

Erik sighs, all the fight seeming to drain out of him with that one breath. “Can I stay or not?”

Charles looks away, catching Hank’s gaze. Hank still has his arms crossed, but his anger has faded enough to let the serum take over again. Hank doesn't say anything, leaving the decision to Charles.

“Fine,” Charles says. “Come with me.”

He leaves Erik in the guest room next to Raven's, as far from himself and Lorna as he can get in this wing of the house, with a set of towels and a first aid kit.

Hank is waiting in the hall. "I don't like this," he says.

"Well I'm not too keen on it either but what am I supposed to do? Leave him for the government to lock up again?"

Hank frowns, glaring at the door to Erik's room as though Erik will be able to sense his disapproval. "It's too much of a coincidence, you running into him in the city and then him showing up right after Raven."

“I can’t leave them,” Charles says.

Hank scoffs, and Charles knows that if he had his powers he’d be able to hear Hank thinking, _they left you._

He’s glad he can’t hear it.

\---

Erik stays for more than just the one night. He keeps to himself, staying in his room and only venturing out for meals late in the evening or when Charles is busy teaching. He catches Erik and Raven having a heated conversation in the hall, but it’s hushed enough he can’t make out what they’re saying. Charles would make more of a fuss about it, but it’s a big house and he knows all the tricks for avoiding people in it when he wants to; he spent years as a child honing that skill.

So it’s not until two days later that he and Erik wind up in the kitchen at the same time. Charles is nursing a mug of tea while Lorna picks all of the orange Fruit Loops out of her bowl and arranges them in a line on the table.

Erik stops in the doorway, clearly surprised to see him, and Charles' sits up straighter, looking him in the eyes.

"Good morning, Erik."

Erik nods in acknowledgement and says, "I didn't expect you to be up so early."

Charles shrugs, but doesn't try to explain that Lorna'd had a nightmare and been too hyper to be soothed back to sleep. "I didn't expect you to still be here at all," he says.

Erik heads to the coffee machine and busies himself with setting it to brew, before turning back to look at Charles, hip propped on the counter and arms crossed. "You didn't seem to mind," he says.

"You said one night."

"I can leave today, if you'd like," Erik says.

Charles sighs, looking at Lorna who is watching the two of them closely in turn. With such a serious expression on her face, she looks even more like Erik than usual. He nudges her bowl back in front of her, careful not to disturb her arrangement of Fruit Loops. "You need to eat it, not play with it," he tells her. She looks at him like he's an idiot, and Charles is just glad she hasn't learned to roll her eyes yet. 

To Erik he says, "Do you have anywhere else to go?"

There's a long pause before Erik says, "Not that I can get to right now."

"You can stay until you get something arranged," Charles says. "But do it quickly."

"Thank you," Erik says. He turns back to pour himself a mug of coffee from the still brewing pot. "Truly," he adds, coming to sit down at the table.

Having Erik and Lorna so close still makes Charles' stomach clench up in dread. He wants to take it back, tell Erik that he's not welcome ever again, but that would only make Erik suspicious now. And once Erik thinks someone is hiding something from him he goes after it like a dog with a bone, unwilling to leave well enough alone.

Instead Charles tells Lorna, "If you're not going to eat then we'll go back upstairs."

Lorna picks up a piece of cereal and puts it in her mouth, chomping down loudly. She watches Erik while she chews, and he tilts his head at her, making a funny face. Lorna grins. "Do you live here now?" she asks.

"No," Charles says firmly. "He's just visiting for a few days."

"But Auntie Raven lives here now," Lorna says. "Are you her boyfriend?"

Erik chokes on his coffee. Once he's recovered he says, "No, definitely not."

"Scott is Jean's boyfriend," Lorna says.

"Jean isn't old enough to have a boyfriend," Charles tell her.

"Boys are stupid," Lorna continues. "I never want a boyfriend."

"I'm sure your father is very glad to hear that," Erik says with a laugh.

Charles should laugh too, his daughter is being silly and precocious and he should laugh, but instead his stomach gives a sick twist and he carefully avoids meeting Erik's eyes. Watching Erik and Lorna interact at all is painful.

"Unless he's an astronaut," Lorna says emphatically. "Astronauts are groovy."

There's a laugh from the doorway, and Charles looks up to find Raven watching them. "She's definitely your kid, Charles."

"I didn't really have any doubts about that," Charles says with a tilt of his head.

Raven grabs her own mug of coffee and tells Erik, "Charles used to try to pick up girls at the pub by telling them they had groovy mutations."

Erik laughs and asks Charles, "How did that work for you?"

"Better than you'd expect," Charles says, keeping his voice even. He'd essentially used the same line on Erik when they met, after all. And look how beautifully that had worked out.

Raven's laughing. She snags a handful from the cereal box and starts munching on it. Between bites she asks Charles, "Are you teaching today?" She's switched to rather pointedly ignoring Erik now, seeming to have realized just who she was joking with, but Charles can't say he isn't doing the same.

"It's Saturday. Even I'm not that cruel."

"Good," Raven says. "I wanted to go into town. You can come."

Charles frowns. "Maybe," he says. He actually has a ton of paperwork to catch up on, licensing and taxes and other tedious but necessary tasks. "You'd be better off asking Hank."

"I wanna go," Lorna says. She's giving Raven her best puppy dog eyes.

"Of course you can go," Raven says, beaming at her. Then she glances at Charles, "That is, if your dad says yes."

"I can hardly say no now," Charles says ruefully. "It's fine, just don't load her full of sugar or she'll never go to bed tonight."

"I wanna go on the spinny, " Lorna says.

"The what?" Raven asks.

"She means the merry-go-round. At the park," Charles explains.

"Oh. Sure," Raven says. "We can go to the park."

"Yay!" Lorna yells, scattering her orange Fruit Loops across the table.

\---

It turns out that leaving Raven alone with Hank and Lorna was a mistake. When they get back, she barges into Charles' study. He jerks upright in his chair, knocking his elbow into the glass of scotch he's been nursing. It tips and spills onto the stack of papers he's been working his way through. He curses and starts trying to mop it up with some of the less important papers on the desk.

"Is it true?" Raven asks.

"Is what true?" he asks, switching to using his sleeve to try and stop the liquid from soaking completely through the stack and ruining the ink.

"Is Lorna Erik's daughter?"

Charles stops, head coming up to stare at her in shock. He needs to say something, deflect this and tell her how ridiculous the very idea is. Of course it's ridiculous, a man being pregnant is ridiculous even after he lived through it.

The words won't come. He just keeps staring at her, whiskey slowly soaking into his sleeve.

"It is, isn't it?" she says. "You... What the fuck, Charles? How did you even..."

The occasions that Charles has seen Raven at a loss for words are few and far between.

"Did Hank tell you?" he finally manages to ask. His voice sounds odd even to himself, too flat, too even. Too calm for the situation.

"He didn't mean to, but yes. Seriously, Charles. What the fuck?"

He finally has the presence of mind to tell her, "Close the door, for God's sake."

Raven does, slamming it shut, before whirling back to him and demanding, "How is it even possible?"

Charles shrugs. "Mutation, obviously."

" _Obviously_ ," Raven spits back out at him. "There's nothing obvious about this one. You were _pregnant_ , you _gave birth_ \--"

"Yes, I was there for that part, Raven."

She runs her hands back through her hair, shifting from blonde to red as she does, before asking, "Why didn't you tell me?"

Charles sighs, looking back down at the mess of his desk. He moves the stack of ruined papers to one side and presses a blank sheet to the small puddle of liquid left, trying to soak it up. Waste of good whiskey, really.

"Charles," Raven prompts.

"Would you have believed me?" he asks.

"Of course," Raven says. "I'm just... Surprised. It's a lot to take in, you know."

"I do, yes," Charles says. He meets her gaze, swallowing hard at the way she's watching him. "You didn't tell Erik, did you?"

"I can't believe you're keeping this from him. Especially when he's _here_. It's not like you don't know how to reach him."

"And what do you think he'd do if he knew?" Charles asks. "I can't--" He stops himself before saying that he can't lose Lorna. Not telling Erik might have begun as the only option with no way to find or contact him, but even Charles knows that excuse is weak. He could have used Cerebro; Erik hasn't had the helmet that blocks Charles out since he left it behind in Washington. Charles could have done it. But he hadn't, and he can't make himself regret it now. The same way he can't make himself regret not saying anything a month ago, or in the past couple days. He has no idea what Erik will do if he finds out now, and that uncertainty has given way to a primal fear. At this point, he's been keeping this secret for so long he's not sure how to stop.

"What do _you_ think he'd do? You don't think he'd hurt her." It's not a question. "Erik's an asshole but he's wouldn't do anything like that. He'll try to kill me without a second thought, sure, but he wouldn't do anything to his own kid," she adds. "Or to you."

"Erik always manages to do plenty of damage, however unintentional it may be," Charles points out. "At the very least he would have to leave her behind and I'm not putting her through that."

And Raven, who isn't the most perceptive person ever for all that she's an excellent mimic, but who has always been able to see straight through Charles to the lonely little boy she'd first met, says, "You mean he'd leave _you_ again."

"Right, we're done here," Charles says. He's done with this conversation. Raven hasn't told anyone and he doesn't have to stand here and defend his choices to her, of all people. He pushes past her and out the door.

\---

Once Raven knows, the secret only lasts another day. Charles has left Lorna with Raven while he goes upstairs for his next dose of the serum, and he's woken from the post-serum induced haze by the sound of the bedroom door slamming open. It bounces off the wall and he can feel the vibration through the floor. He looks up to find Erik standing in the doorway, face twisted up into a furious snarl. He's across the room and hauling Charles to his feet before he can react. 

"Four years, Charles! _Four years_ and you never thought to tell me I had a child." Erik's shaking him, practically spitting in his face with rage.

Charles tries to catch up, his brain still slow and the world still just a bit muted. "What?"

"You never told me Lorna was mine!"

Behind Erik, Charles can see Raven skidding to a stop on the doorway, Lorna clutched in her arms. "Erik, stop," she says.

"How did you find out?" is the only thing Charles can think to ask.

It's apparently the wrong question to ask, because if anything Erik only gets more angry. "How did I find out? Your darling sister let it slip. Looks like everyone knew and you've just been playing me for the fool."

From the doorway, Raven says, "Charles, I tried to explain. I didn't--"

"Shut up," Erik says, throwing a hand back towards the door. It slams shut in Raven's face, but she shoves it open again a second later.

Erik's shaking Charles again. "I can't believe you would--"

"Let me go," Charles says, slamming a fist into the hollow between Erik collarbone and shoulder. Erik releases him, but only for a moment. He practically growls as he grabs Charles wrists, pinning him to the wall. Charles tried to pull away, shove Erik off, but Erik has the advantage of height and strength and not being groggy from drug use.

"Let go," Charles demands again.

"No," Erik says. He squeezes hard enough to grind the bones in Charles' wrists together.

"Erik, I swear to god, let me--"

"Make me," Erik says. The twist of his lips is a cruel mockery of a smile. Charles tugs against his hold again to no avail. "Oh," Erik says, voice exaggerating fake surprise. "That's right, you _can't_."

Charles glares up at him. Erik's forgotten that though the serum takes away his powers, it gives him back his legs. Charles slams his knee up into Erik's groin. Erik lets go of him and doubles over with a sound that's trying to be a groan but is mostly just a wheeze. Charles shoves him back so he's not pinned with his back the wall, but Erik grabs his arm again, grip like a vice, before he can move away.

Across the room, Lorna is struggling in Raven's arms. "Stop hurting Daddy," she yells. She throws a hand out towards them. The grate from the fireplace rattles, then comes flying straight at them. It stops in mid-air with a raise of Erik's hand and clatters to the floor harmlessly, but serves as enough of a distraction for Charles to pull free of Erik's slackened hold on him.

Lorna's crying. Raven sets her down, trying to keep a hold of her arm, but Lorna twists free and runs to Charles, slamming into him with an "Oof!"

"It's alright, I'm fine," Charles says, picking her up. She buries her face against his shoulder, rubbing tears and snot onto his shirt. Erik is watching them with an expression that makes Charles wish he did have his telepathy, just to figure out what he's thinking. He turns to leave and Erik doesn't try to stop him this time.

As he walks down the hallway he can hear Raven saying, "Damn it, Erik. Why do you always have to be such an asshole?" Erik's response is too muffled to make out.

\---

Later that night, Erik finds Charles in his study. He's standing in the doorway, just watching as Charles walks over to the liquor cabinet. “Were you ever planning on telling me?” he asks, voice soft. It's a stark difference from when he'd woken Charles screaming, just hours earlier.

Charles pours himself a generous serving of whiskey before answering. “Not particularly, no.” When he glances up Erik still looks furious, but like he's trying to reign it in, hands clenched into fists at his side.

“She’s my daughter too,” Erik says.

"And what would you have done, if you'd known?"

"I would have--" Erik begins angrily, but cuts himself off. He's still fuming, but looks a bit uncertain as well. "I would have _seen_ her," he finally says.

"Well then, you've seen her. Anything else I can do for you?" Charles asks, letting himself flop back onto the sofa. He takes a long drink of his whiskey, closing his eyes and concentrating on the slow burn of it through his chest.

"You can't just expect me to walk away," Erik says. "Not now."

Charles starts to laugh, but cuts himself off sharply. "On the contrary, that's exactly what I expect you to do. That's what you're good at." Erik." When he looks up, he can't read Erik's expression. Still angry, but something else too. "You _always_ walk away. You can try to accuse me of abandoning you again, or the mutant cause, or whatever other faults you'd like to throw in my face, but _you're_ the one who always leaves."

Erik's pacing, stalking between the armchair and the desk in long strides. “You’re changing the subject. You hid _my child_ from me. You’d have kept doing it her whole life if Raven hadn’t slipped up. You don’t even know… This doesn’t even begin to compare to anything I’ve done to you and you know it. Did everyone know but me?"

“Are you actually being serious right now?” Charles asks, ignoring the question in favor of the most offensive part of Erik's statement. "You left me bleeding out on a goddamned beach in Cuba. You know how long it took before someone got us out of there? Six hours. Not that I'd know, since I was unconscious for most of it. But you just had to make a dramatic exit and I lost my fucking legs because of it."

“My _child_ , Charles. I never meant for you to be hurt, and yet you’ve been intentionally hiding her away from me.”

Charles is in no mood for Erik’s very particular brand of logic at the moment. "Right. You didn't mean to so that makes it alright. That's how it always works with you." Charles sneers at him. "I was pregnant then too, you know?" Charles had always thought having this conversation with Erik would be painful, but now that he's doing it, it feels good to say all of this.

"You... What?" Erik’s furious expression melts into one of shock. "You never said..."

Charles' rage finally drains out of him, leaving him with just the sick feeling in his stomach and an overwhelming exhaustion. He swallows hard and reaches for his drink again. He's way too sober for this conversation.

"There's nothing to say."

"What happened?" Erik asks.

"I told you what happened. I got shot," Charles says. He debates downing the rest of his drink like a shot, but decides that would make his feelings too obvious. He settles for a long sip.

"Charles..." Erik doesn't look angry anymore, which Charles supposes counts for something.

Charles spreads his hands out, a gesture of surrender. "What do you me to say, Erik? Do you want me to say I'm sorry? I'm not. I'd do it again. You're on the run and there's no place for a child in that life."

"I can make a place," Erik says. He pulls one of the arm chairs around to face Charles and sinks onto it, leaning forward with with his elbows resting on his thighs.

Charles looks at him skeptically. "Really? While you're on every government watch list that exists?"

Erik's frown deepens, and he asks, "Are you even going to let me try?"

Charles looks away, tilting his glass and watching the liquor slosh back and forth. He'd like for everything to go back to normal, or at least the normal he'd had before Erik walked back into his life. Just him and Lorna. But going back isn't an option. It never really was, if Charles is being honest with himself. He knew things were going to change from the moment he agreed to talk to Erik again, when they somehow managed to bump into each other in a city of millions. He can't go back.

"We can try," Charles finally says. He tries not to think too hard about Erik's obvious relief. "With some stipulations," he adds.

Erik looks wary again. "Like what?"

"Like you can't take her anywhere. You can't take her with you when you leave."

"I wasn't planning on leaving," Erik says.

Charles almost rolls his eyes at him. "You were, and you will again soon enough." Erik looks like he's going to protest again so Charles says, "Either way, you can't take her with you. This is her home and it would be confusing and traumatic if you tried."

"Alright," Erik says. "I promise I won't take her away from you." He leans back in his chair, crossing his legs. "I wouldn't do that, not to you or to her. I just want... I just want to see her, get to know her."

"Alright," Charles says finally. "You can do that."

"Thank you," Erik says.

Charles shrugs, uncomfortable. He doubts Erik's gratitude with the crumbs he's offering will last, but he'll take it while he can. Charles lifts his glass and takes another drink, staring into the bottom of the glass like it contains all the right answers. It never does.


	4. Erik, part one

Erik’s on his way back to his room when Charles’ daughter nearly crashes into his legs. He catches her before she can trip into him, lifting her up, and says, “We have to stop meeting like this.”

Lorna giggles at him. “Hi Mr. Erik.”

Raven jogs up to them, slightly out of breath from chasing the child through the house. “He’s really not respectable enough to call him mister anything,” she tells Lorna.

“I suppose you’re not Miss Raven then?” Erik raises an eyebrow at her.

“She’s Auntie Raven,” Lorna says. Raven smiles smugly. Lorna pats Erik’s chest. “You can be Mr. Erik, even if you’re not res-peck-able.”

“Why thank you,” Erik says. He sets her back down, intending to continue on to his room, but Lorna grabs his hand and starts tugging him towards what must be her nursery.

“Come play,” she says, pulling insistently. Erik has to bend over to let her keep hold of his hand.

Raven’s grin has gone from smug to shit-eating. “Yes Erik, come play. Just let me grab a camera so I can send the picture of the fierce fugitive Magneto playing with dolls to the Times.”

Erik glares at her over his shoulder as he lets Lorna drag him towards her nursery. For a toddler she's very insistent about what she wants.

Lorna’s idea of playing is to point to a spot on the floor and tell Erik to sit and then use her captive audience to show him all of her dolls and stuffed animals one by one. They each have different names and stare up at him with tiny glass eyes. Erik feels completely out of his depth and Raven’s barely stifling her laughter.

“I don’t know how to play dolls,” Erik finally says, looking at them all a bit helplessly. Lorna looks distinctly disappointed in him, brow furrowed; Erik can see the resemblance to Charles. He shrugs. “Sorry.”

“You can show Auntie Raven your power,” Lorna says. She jumps up and darts across the room, returning with the little toy subway car Erik had made for her months ago. He’s surprised she still has it.

“I’ve already seen his powers,” Raven says, standing up. “Can you watch her for a sec? I’ll be right back.”

Erik nods, because he is not afraid of being alone with a toddler. He’s not.

Lorna plops down onto the floor in front of him, legs crossed, and looks at him expectantly.

“Um,” Erik says. “What do you want me to make?”

“Can you do a giraffe? Hank gave me a book and it has giraffes and elephants and lions in it.”

Erik balances the toy above his hand, melts it down, and reforms it into a giraffe. It’s poor quality, really, being made from the cheap utensils at that diner, but it looks like a giraffe and Lorna claps in excitement when he hands it to her.

“My turn,” she says. She concentrates hard on the giraffe and ignores Erik asking what she’s trying to do. After a few moments, the giraffe starts to collapse in on itself, turning into a crumpled lump in her hands. She frowns. “I don’t know how to make it look like an elephant. Do it again?” She holds the lump of metal back out to Erik, who’s staring at it in surprise.

“I thought she was telekinetic,” he says when Raven gets back. "She was manipulating the atomic structure of the metal, same as my power.”

“Well, she probably got it from you,” Raven says, dropping down onto the floor and reaching for the lump of metal Lorna’s holding to inspect it.

“What?” Erik asks.

Raven freezes in mid-motion, halfway onto her knees and still reaching towards Lorna. It takes a long moment before she turns her head to look at him, eyes wide. “Uh…” she says.

\---

After yelling at Charles and frightening Lorna, Erik's rage has reduced to a simmering feeling under his skin instead of maelstrom it had been. He lets Raven berate him for a solid ten minutes before he shoves past her and goes looking for Charles again.

He finds him sitting in a corner of Hank's lab, Lorna on his lap. Erik can see her pointing at a picture book before Hank steps in front of him, blocking Erik from coming inside.

"Let me in, Hank," Erik says. He can see Charles watching them silently from over Hank's shoulder.

Hank grabs Erik's arm and pushes him back out of the room, reminding Erik of how much strength he hides behind his unassuming physique. Hank pulls the door shut behind them as Erik shakes him off.

"I need to talk to Charles," Erik says.

"You need to calm down," Hank says.

"You have no idea what I need to do," Erik spits back at him.

Hank crosses his arms. "You're not going in there."

"You've clearly forgotten which of us lost the last time we fought.”

Hank merely tilts his head in acknowledgement and says, "Lorna only quit crying a minute ago, but if you want to go in there and scare her again then be my guest. That will definitely help the situation." He steps back, gesturing at the door. "Well, go on."

Erik forces himself to take deep breaths, clenching his hands into fists so tightly that his nails bite into the skin of his palms. He wants to have it out with Charles, but that's impossible when he's using Lorna as a shield. "You've both been hiding her from me," Erik finally says.

"You weren't here," Hank says. "It wasn't so much about hiding her as it was about not trying to find you."

"She _my_ child." And that's the part that Erik's hung up on. His child, who shares his power, and who has no idea who he is. He doesn't know who _she_ is, and that makes something inside him clench up, adding fuel to his indignation.

"And she'll still be there when you've calmed the fuck down and stopped yelling and throwing things."

"I should have known you'd be in on this too," Erik sneers. "You and Charles, hiding in this mansion of yours and acting like the rest of the world is beneath you."

"I think that's your trick," Hank says. He sighs, pushing his glasses up to rub the bridge of his nose. "You don't know what it's been like, all these years."

"So enlighten me," Erik says, spreading his hands out. "I'm listening."

Hank raises his eyebrows. "No you're not," he says with a shake of his head. "You and Charles need to talk, but you can't do it if you're going to yell. He'll just dig his feet in and you won't get anywhere. So, here’s some friendly advice: go do whatever you need to do to be able to carry on a civil conversation and then come back." Hank's glare hasn't diminished in the slightest. "I don't care what it is," he adds. "Go tear down a building or shoot someone or whatever it is that makes you happy, but if you come back in here yelling and screaming and hitting him again then I'll throw you out myself."

"So you're Charles' bodyguard now? Here I thought you were just his lacky."

"I'm his friend,” Hank says. “And I care about him, which is more than I can say for you."

Erik's still seething, but he can recognize when he needs to retreat and come back at a different time, try a different tactic, so he turns and stalks away.

He goes outside and tears the giant satellite dish out of the ground.

\---

After a couple of hours spent generally destroying things with his power and making a mess of the front lawn, Erik feels calm enough to talk to Charles without trying to kill him. It's as close to civil as he's going to get right now.

It goes better than he expected, though he still has more questions than answers. Charles has explained what happened, but not _why_ , and Erik had thought they at least regarded each other as equal enough for explanations.

Charles' almost offhand comment about having a miscarriage years ago is also rattling around in Erik's brain. It won't leave him alone, and Erik keeps wavering between wanting to go back and demand details and an overwhelming desire to forget Charles ever mentioned it.

Still, he leaves that night with a promise that he can talk to Lorna, if not an apology from Charles for hiding her in the first place.

Talking to Lorna the next morning goes both better and worse than Erik expected. On the one hand, he's not exactly _meeting_ her, since they met a month ago. On the other, it's like they're both new people. She still thinks Erik is just one of the many people who live in the mansion, albeit one that has the same power as her. Erik's trying to get past the overwhelming hindbrain sense of _mine_ that he feels when he thinks about her so he can actually figure out what to say to her.

It turns out Charles has already talked to her, because when Erik sees Lorna the next morning she leans in close to his face, brow furrowed. It's the most serious expression he's ever seen on her, and it reminds Erik of how Charles' face always scrunches up a bit when he's thinking particularly hard about something.

Finally she says, "Daddy said that you're my dad too."

"I am," Erik says. He looks over at Charles, who is picking at a bit of lint on his sweater and offering no help whatsoever. Erik's not sure why he was expecting any.

Lorna frowns at him for a bit longer, then says, "Okay." She turns back to Charles and asks, "Can we have pancakes?"

Erik's still blinking at the non-sequitur when Charles says, "Sure."

Lorna grabs Erik's hand and starts pulling him out of the room, presumably towards the kitchen. "Come on, Mr. Erik. Daddy makes them with Mickey Mouse ears and chocolate chips."

Erik can't tell if this conversation is going well or not--she's still calling him Mr. Erik but at least she's not crying--and lets himself be dragged along. Once in the kitchen, Charles says, "She thinks you're a new toy."

"Is that good or bad?" Erik asks.

Charles shrugs and turns toward the cabinets, gathering ingredients. "Depends how long it lasts," he says.

"The newness?"

"How long you stay," Charles clarifies.

Erik can't deny that he had been planning to leave as soon as he could get in touch with his source for a new passport, planning to head to Europe and out of the reach of the American government, but yesterday's revelations have changed all that. "I'm not leaving," Erik says.

Charles scoffs but doesn't turn around.

"Not unless you make me," Erik adds.

Charles does turn around then, one hand on his hip and one holding on to the counter. He starts to say something, then catches sight of Lorna watching them. "I'm not having this conversation," he says, turning away again.

"There are a lot of conversations you're not having," Erik says. "Why would I have ever thought this might be an exception?"

Charles spins back around and shoves a carton of milk into Erik's hands. He levels a glare at Erik and doesn't look away as he says, "Lorna, Erik's going to make you pancakes. I'll be upstairs." With that, Charles turns and walks away.

Erik stares after him for a moment, then looks down at the milk in his hand, then over at Lorna, sitting at the table.

"Can you make Mickey Mouse ears?" she asks.

\---

Erik goes looking for Charles again after he finally manages to make edible pancakes. They don’t look like Mickey Mouse, but Erik lets Lorna add the chocolate chips herself--which results in every inch of the pancake having a chocolate chip carefully placed on it--and she seems satisfied enough. She trails after him through the house, saying, “Daddy goes to the study when he’s mad.”

“What makes you think he’s mad?” Erik asks, mostly because he’s curious about how much she understands about the argument between himself and Charles.

“He only yells when he’s mad,” Lorna says. She looks up at Erik. “I don’t think he likes you.”

Erik snorts. “That’s an understatement.”

As he gets closer to the study he can hear shouting, but it stops as soon as Lorna runs ahead of him into the room. Erik finds Charles and Raven standing on opposite sides of the desk. Raven looks angry, but it’s mixed with the stubborn look that Erik usually associates with her refusing to admit she’s wrong. Charles just looks exhausted, but smiles when he looks at Lorna, crouching down to talk to her.

“Can we go outside?” Lorna asks, practically bouncing on her toes. “I saw a bunny from the window and it’s sunny and are there baby bunnies? I want to see the baby bunnies. And I want to show Mr. Erik my bike.” She turns to Erik and continues babbling, “It’s green and metal and Daddy won’t let me take off the training wheels yet but I’m really good at riding and you can ride Hank’s bike and we can go down the driveway but not on the road ‘cos Daddy said not to.”

Charles looks bemused as he looks over her head at Erik and asks, “How much sugar did you give her?”

“Just half the bag of chocolate,” Erik says. He wonders if that was the wrong thing to do.

Lorna’s tugging on Charles’ hand. “Come on, come on, let’s _go_.”

Charles is still looking at Erik, and tells Lorna, “Why don’t you take Erik and show him your bike? I need to do some work in here today.”

Lorna frowns and asks, “You’re not coming?”

“No,” Charles says. “Go play with Erik. I’m sure he’ll like your bike. I’ll see you at lunch.” He nudges her towards Erik, and Erik holds out a hand for her to take.

\---

What finally breaks the ice with Lorna is, fittingly enough, the same thing that led Erik to the discovery that she was his daughter. She's fascinated by his power and learns quickly with someone she can copy.

Charles--who has mostly left Erik alone with Lorna for a decent chunk of each afternoon--catches them at it. Erik has finally gotten Lorna to stop simply pulling objects towards herself, like she herself is the magnet, and instead is teaching her how to lift them gently.

Erik's focused on making sure Lorna only lifts the paperweight instead of sending it careening around the room and doesn't realize Charles is there until he says, "Try not to teach her how to lift football stadiums until she's at least ten."

Erik twists around from his spot on the floor to grin at him. "She might be able to by then, actually. She's a quick learner. I didn't even have my powers until I was that age."

"Hmm," is all Charles says.

"Daddy, come watch," Lorna says.

Charles comes closer until he can kneel down next to Lorna. "What are you doing?"

She lifts the paperweight again and it wobbles in the air, but stays in relatively the same spot instead of being pulled directly towards her. She wrinkles her nose as she does it and Erik decides that it's definitely the cutest thing ever. She lets go and it drops back to the floor with a _thunk_. "Erik showed me," she says.

"That's nice of him," Charles says.

Lorna smiles.

"When did her powers manifest?" Erik asks. It feel wrong that he doesn't know simple, fundamental things like this about his own daughter, and he's trying very hard not to get angry all over again each time he finds something new that he should already know.

"Two years ago," Charles says.

"So she was..."

"Two," Charles says. "Hank thought it might be because..." He trails off, then says, "It's earlier than I thought it might happen, anyway. I didn't have mine until I was nine."

"I think I was ten or eleven," Erik says. "I don't really remember." Everything from his childhood that he wishes he remembered is a bit of a blur, especially in comparison to his memories of everything after he’d met Shaw.

"Hard to forget when mine started," Charles says wryly. "My stepfather tried to send me to an asylum until I learned to shut up about hearing voices."

Erik frowns. Charles isn't looking at him, busying himself with retying Lorna's shoe, so Erik can only see his profile, hair hanging forward and hiding his face. "You never told me that," Erik says.

Charles shrugs. "Not really worth telling," he says. "I realized it wasn't just me being crazy when I met Raven."

Erik's still frowning, but forces his mouth into a smile when he catches Lorna watching him. "All the more reason we need to create a world where Lorna never has to hide who she is," he says.

Charles turns to look at him with a scowl. "Don't you dare use her to justify the war you're trying to start," he says.

_There is no better justification_ , Erik thinks. "I want a better world for her to grow up in. A world where she's not targeted by humans just for being different. Surely you want the same.”

"Of course I do, but…” Charles frowns. “No ones targeting her now.”

“They would have been. Isn’t that the whole reason that friend of yours came from the future to warn us?” Erik asks.

“You didn’t really help that situation much, you know,” Charles says, going for the change of topic. “If anything, trying to assassinate another president just made it worse.”

"I wasn't trying to assassinate him," Erik says.

"What do you call pointing a gun at the president then? Or were you trying to save him too?" Charles asks.

"I was trying to stop him from unleashing the weapons that were going to destroy us,” Erik tells him. “You’re welcome, by the way,” he adds.

Charles looks at him incredulously and for a moment Erik thinks that Charles is going to scream in frustration. But then he runs a hand through his hair, gripping hard and pulling, before standing up. He grabs Lorna's hand and pulls her to her feet. "Come on, Lorna. Time for a nap."

"No," Lorna says, digging her heels in. "No nap."

Charles tugs on her arm and she goes limp, forcing him to stoop as she drops to the floor like dead weight. "Lorna, stop it."

"No nap," she says again. "I wanna play with Erik."

"Let her go," Erik says.

Charles glares at him. "Don't tell me what to--"

"No nap!" Lorna screams.

Charles lets her go, and she jumps up to run behind Erik, ducking behind his back and using him a shield. Charles stares at them for a long moment, expression unreadable, before saying, “Fine then,” and leaving.

Erik watches him go. He should probably scold Lorna for throwing a tantrum--he has a fair idea that if he'd disobeyed his own father like that he would have been punished for it, even if he can't remember a specific incidence of it happening--but she's smiling at him now and truth be told he’d rather keep spending time with her than have Charles take her away for a nap at the moment. She's gone from calling him 'Mr. Erik' to just 'Erik' today, and that’s at least progress.

\---

There’s a knock on Erik’s door that evening. When he opens the door he finds Charles standing in the hallway, Lorna in his arms. She’s wearing a pink nightgown and holding a book under the arm that isn’t clutched around Charles’ neck.

They all stand there in silence for just long enough to make it feel awkward, then Charles jostles Lorna a bit and says, “Well, you have to ask him.”

Lorna doesn’t say anything, but does hold the book out towards Erik.

Erik takes it from her, reading the title. “Winnie the Pooh?”

Lorna nods, but still doesn’t say anything.

“She wants you to read it to her,” Charles says. “Go on,” he tells Lorna again. “If you ask he’ll say yes.” The look he gives Erik over her head is a decent indication of what will happen to Erik if he tries to say no, not that he was planning to.

“Do you want me to read it?” Erik asks Lorna.

She nods again. “Yes,” she says.

Erik’s not sure why she’s turned shy again when she’s normally a ball of energy during the day. “Okay,” he says.

Charles sets Lorna down and gives her a kiss before she runs into Erik’s room, climbing up onto the small armchair by the fireplace. After he straightens up he tells Erik, “We’re on chapter seven. If she falls asleep don’t try to move her, she keeps waking back up again.”

Now that Erik’s looking, Charles looks exhausted himself. “What wrong?” he asks.

Charles sighs. “What’s wrong is she didn’t take a nap today and now she’s overly tired but won’t settle down and sleep. Just… try to get her to go to sleep. Please.”

Trust Charles to know how to make Erik feel like an ass with just one sentence. He doesn’t apologize, but says, “I can put her to bed.”

Charles nods. “Okay. If she’s still not out in another hour come get me.”

He leaves them alone, and Erik turns back to find Lorna already squeezed onto one side of the armchair, waiting for him. “What’s this book about?” he asks, as he sits next to her. She scrambles onto his lap, narrowly missing kicking him in the nuts and still managing to make him wince as her knees and elbows dig in. When she finally settles down, her body is a warm weight against Erik’s side and she seems even tinier than usual. Erik’s worried he might break her if he moves the wrong way, but wraps an arm around her to hold her in place. 

Lorna wiggles and presses in closer to his side. “It’s about Winnie the Pooh,” she says. “And Christopher Robin and Piglet and Eeyore and they live in the Forest and Pooh eats honey.” She points to the picture on the front and says, “That’s Christopher Robin. And that’s Rabbit.”

Erik takes the book back from her gently and finds the bookmark. He holds it up, elbow resting on the arm of the chair, and reads, “ _Nobody seems to know where they came from, but there they were in the Forest: Kanga and Baby Roo._ ”

Lorna tugs on his arm to pull the book down so she can see the pictures. She points to the drawing of a kangaroo and says, “That’s Kanga and that’s Baby Roo. Kanga is the mommy.”

“Where’s the daddy?” Erik asks.

Erik feels Lorna shrug her shoulders against his side. “There’s just Kanga.”

Erik goes back to reading, “ _When Pooh asked Christopher Robin, ‘How did they come here?’ Christopher Robin said, ‘In the Usual Way, if you know what I mean, Pooh,’ and Pooh, who didn’t, said ‘Oh!’ Then nodded his head twice and said, ‘In the Usual Way. Ah!’_ ”

\---

After Lorna finally falls asleep two chapters later, Erik spends a long time just sitting with her. He’s not sure how long exactly, but eventually his legs are going numb from sitting in the same position for so long and he stands up carefully, shifting Lorna only enough to carry her easily. She’s dead weight, mumbling sleepily against his neck as he carries her back down to her nursery, and flopping onto her back when he lays her down in bed.

Once he’s certain she’s not going to wake back up again, he goes looking for Charles. He finds him downstairs in his study, reading something at his desk.

“She fell asleep,” Erik says.

Charles looks up. He still looks tired, Erik notes. “Finally,” Charles says, then adds, “Thank you.”

Erik shrugs. “I’m sorry I kept her up earlier. I didn’t know it would mess her up going to bed later.”

Charles frowns, but says, “No harm done.”

Erik looks around the room, hoping for Charles to say something else to help diffuse the awkward silence they've found themselves in now. Eventually Erik spots the chess set sitting on a bookshelf in one corner of the room and asks, "Fancy a game?"

Charles follows his gaze and says, "Oh. I'd forgotten that was in here." He looks up at Erik with a shrug. "Sure, why not?"

Erik brings the board over and it's not until he's setting it down on the table that he realizes this is the same spot where they used to play chess before everything that happened in Cuba. If Charles has noticed, it doesn't show. The room has changed anyway. The overstuffed and antique furniture is the same, so are the bookcases, but now there's a general disarray and clutter that was absent before. Papers and books are piled about haphazardly, there are several empty glasses on the desktop, the end table is a mess of odds and ends, and a pile of colorful blocks sits next to the sofa.

Erik settles into one of the chairs and starts arranging the pieces.

Charles says, "I'm probably even more out of practice than the last time we played. Lorna only knows checkers and Hank doesn't have the patience." He walks over, glass of whiskey in each hand, and hands one to Erik before sitting down.

Erik grins. "An easy victory for me then. White or black?"

"White. You're not going to let me win?" Charles asks.

"Where's the fun in that?"

True to his word, Erik doesn't let Charles win. Charles beats him fair and square and then, because he's convinced Erik threw the game, demands a rematch. By the time they're halfway through the second game and more than halfway through the bottle of whiskey, the conversation is flowing much more smoothly. They're only really talking about Lorna, but Erik's just glad to have a common interest to discuss.

"Her first word was blue," Charles says, in answer to one of Erik's questions. "Or rather 'boo'. Hank was holding her when she said it, so then she spent a couple months calling him Boo.”

Erik tries to picture it, but can't quite imagine Lorna that small. There's a resentment churning in his gut because he could have been here, would have been here, if he'd only known. He pushes it down. Getting angry with Charles has never ended well for him, and he'd rather not have another fight when tonight has almost reminded him of the friendship they used to have. "Have you got a picture of her?" he asks.

"Somewhere around here." Charles stands up, walking over to his desk and crouching down beside the drawers. He returns with a large leather photo album, and hands it to Erik. "That's her baby book," he says.

Erik opens it a bit apprehensively, not sure what to expect, and the first picture is of Charles holding Lorna. She can't be more than a few weeks old, possibly only a few days. He stares at it for a long moment, chess game forgotten, before eventually turning the page.

The next page looks like it was taken at Christmas. There's one photo of a tiny Lorna sitting on Hank's lap with a red bow stuck to her hair--combined with her green hair and the red dress she's wearing she looks extremely festive--and another of her sitting in front of a tree surrounded by a mess of toys and wrapping paper.

Charles is leaning against the back of Erik's chair, looking over his shoulder. He leans down to point at the photos and says, "First Christmas. Hank and I might have overdone the shopping a bit."

“I didn’t think you were particularly religious,” Erik comments.

Erik can feel Charles’ shrug against his back. “I always hated Christmas when I was a kid. But Raven loved it and we always had a big tree, which was pretty, so… Lorna likes it, anyway.”

“Hmm,” Erik says. He thinks about saying something, it would be easy to turn this into an argument about holidays and religion, but in the end he honestly doesn’t want to have that fight. If Lorna likes Christmas then she can like Christmas. "She looks happy," Erik says. 

"She was a pretty calm baby," Charles says. "Not that I know what a fussy one is like, but she didn't cry much." He leans forward again to turn the page, warm where his upper body is pressed against the back of Erik's shoulders, and points to a photo of a birthday party. "We went overboard on the birthday shopping too."

Erik wraps a hand around Charles' wrist to keep him in place. “You should have told me about her.”

When he twists around to look, Charles’ expression is shuttered. Then he blinks and looks down, trying to pull away. Erik tightens his grip and twists around fully in the chair. In this position Charles is about a head taller. Erik waits him out and after Charles finally meets his eyes again, Erik stretches upwards, pressing a kiss against Charles’ lips.

There's a moment of surprise before Charles reacts, then he's deepening the kiss and running a hand into Erik's hair to pull him closer, grasping at the short strands.

They should probably talk about this, about everything, Erik thinks. But this is the one thing they’ve never needed to talk about and he’s loathe to change that now, so instead he pulls Charles closer.

Kissing over the back of the chair with Erik's back twisted around becomes uncomfortable after only a couple of minutes, so he pulls back and tugs Charles around in front of him. Erik's closes the album, dropping it gently onto the floor, and then Charles is straddling his lap, the chair just barely big enough to fit his knees alongside Erik's hips, and kissing him again.

Erik's hands go straight to Charles' ass, pulling him closer and grinding down and groaning into the kiss.

Charles pulls back, just enough to be able to say, "We can't do this."

Erik kisses him again. It's a few more long moments before Charles pulls back again and says, breathlessly, "Here, I mean. We can't do this here."

They'd managed to do this in a tiny airplane lavatory with a time-traveller right outside the door once so Erik is pretty sure they could manage with an armchair and an entire study to themselves, but he doesn't argue. "Upstairs?" he asks.

"Yes." Charles is already pushing himself back off the chair, onto his feet, and grabbing Erik's hand to pull him up as well.

They make it to Charles' room and Erik's barely gotten the door closed before Charles pushes him back against it, hands fisting into the collar of his shirt to pull him down into a really rather filthy kiss. Then Charles is tugging Erik's shirt untucked and pushing his hands underneath, touch delightfully cool against Erik's overheated skin. Erik starts walking Charles back towards the bed, hands resting on his hips. He stops kissing him long enough to shrug his own shirt off and pull Charles’ over his head, the pushes Charles back onto the bed. 

Charles lands with a slight _oof!_ and starts shimmying himself into the center of the bed. He starts undoing his own pants, shucking them down his legs and cursing when he realizes he still has shoes on. Erik would laugh, but he’s busy getting rid of his own pants and shoes and socks and climbing onto the bed after Charles.

Erik’s not sure if Charles’ body is really that different or if it’s just that it’s been so long since he’s spent any amount of time studying it; they hadn’t even fully undressed the last time they’d had sex, after all. He lingers over the scar that sits low on Charles’ abdomen, but then Charles shoves at him. “Stop,” he says. “Get on with it already.”

He runs his hands up and down Charles thighs, from his knees up to the crease of his hips, and says, “Which is it?”

Charles makes an inpatient noise and Erik smirks before taking Charles’ cock into his mouth, humming when Charles gasps and reaches down to grip at Erik’s hair. It’s not long before Charles is pulling him off and twisting across the bed to reach for the nightstand to retrieve the lube.

The lube is cold and Erik doesn’t try to warm it before running a finger over Charles’ hole, enjoying Charles’ sharp intake of breath. “Stop teasing,” Charles says.

“You’re impatient,” Erik says, making a point to tease a bit more before working first one, then two fingers into Charles.

Charles grinds down against his hand and says, “No, you’re just slow.”

Erik moves up so he can kiss Charles again, shoving a third finger in as he does and using the way Charles’ gasps to deepen the kiss. Then he really can’t stand to wait any longer, his own erection painfully hard. He pulls his fingers out and positions himself, using one hand to raise Charles’ knee up nearly to his chest, and shoves inside.

Charles tenses under him at first before relaxing, head thrown back and hands fisted in the sheets. Erik waits a moment before starting to thrust, then his patience really is gone. The sound of flesh on flesh is loud enough to almost be obscene, especially coupled with the breathless sounds that Charles is making. Erik braces his hands on either side of Charles to thrust harder and looks down between them as Charles starts jerking himself in time to Erik’s thrusts. The sight is almost enough to make Erik come right away, but he holds out until Charles is coming, clenching down tight around him.

Afterwards, Erik collapses onto his back on one side of the bed, trying to catch his breath. He stretches his hands out towards the edges of the mattress, spread eagle, head tilted back as he stares up at the ceiling fan. Charles crawls up after him, not quite making it to the pillows before flopping over onto his back, the top of his hair brushing against Erik's arm.

"God," Charles groans, still just slightly breathless. "You're really rather good at that."

"Thank you," Erik says, smirking even though Charles can't see him at the moment.

Charles smacks Erik in the chest with the back of his hand, but then leaves it lying there, twisting onto his side to curl towards Erik's body. "Shut up," he says. "Go to sleep."

Erik reaches down until he can grab a corner of the sheet and starts pulling it up until it's at least haphazardly covering their lower halves. One of his own legs is still hanging off the side of the bed and Charles' body is overheated where it's pressed against him but Erik can't bring himself to care. He hasn’t been this comfortable in a long time and he’s going to enjoy it while he can. It can’t possibly last for long.


	5. Erik, part two

When he wakes up the next morning, Charles is already gone. That in and of itself is odd, since of the two of them Erik's always been the one awake with the sun while Charles tries to bury himself under the blanket until at least ten o’clock.

Erik runs into Raven in the hallway as he's heading back to his own room. She looks him up and down, taking in his rumpled clothes and the direction he's coming from, and says, "You have _got_ to be kidding me."

"What?" Erik asks, feigning ignorance.

Raven shakes her head and pushes past him.

She leaves later that afternoon, but not before cornering Erik in his room to tell him that he's an asshole, as though she hasn't said it enough before now.

“Your sister’s charming,” Erik says to Charles later, over dinner. “She’s not planning on coming back anytime soon, is she?”

“For the holidays,” Charles says.

“Which ones?” Erik asks. “Are we talking only the high holidays or is she going to turn up for Labor Day?”

Charles rolls his eyes. “Christmas, I’d imagine. Maybe Thanksgiving.”

“As long as I know in advance when she’s going to show up,” Erik says. “I’d like to arrange to be elsewhere for those occasions.”

That actually makes Charles pause, fork halfway to his mouth. “You want… you’ll be here?” Erik frowns, so Charles clarifies, “You want to stay here?”

Erik sets down his own utensils. “I already told you, I’m not leaving.”

Charles turns back to his plate like it’s the most fascinating thing the world. Erik looks over at Lorna, who is currently licking ketchup off the side of her hand. Hank is pretending to ignore them and focussing on the book propped up in front of his plate.

Why would he leave?

\---

So far, Erik has avoided the part of the house that Charles said the students were staying in like it contained plague victims. Partly because Charles told him to and mostly because he really just doesn’t want to deal with them. But this afternoon Lorna’s absolutely refusing to take a nap unless she has something called Boo. Erik’s already gone through every toy he can find in her room only to have her tell him that none of them are Boo--he’s starting to suspect that she’s having one over on him, since so far he hasn’t found a single toy shaped like, well, whatever a Boo is shaped like--so going to find Charles is his last hope. He’s learned the lesson about what happens if she skips a nap and decides that Charles is more likely to be angry about that then if a couple of the students see him.

Erik realizes why he’s never seen any of the students when he can’t even find the wing of the house they’re staying in. He closes another door to an empty room, adjusts his hold on Lorna in his arms, and asks her, “Are you sure it’s this direction?”

Lorna nods. “Jean’s room is over there.” She points down the hallway, and Erik dutifully goes to that door and checks inside. It does at least look like someone lives in it, but it’s empty now.

“Where’s the classroom?” Erik asks.

Lorna shrugs.

“Which room does Charles--does Daddy--go to everyday? Where they...” Erik realizes he actually has no idea what Charles does with the students each day. “Learn stuff,” he finishes.

“Downstairs,” Lorna says.

Erik’s certain that she’s having one over on him now. Lorna smiles at him, all bright eyes and chubby cheeks and innocence, and Erik heads downstairs to look there.

He does actually find Charles downstairs, standing just outside the exterior door of a second kitchen that Erik didn’t even know existed. “You have two kitchens?” he asks, startling Charles and making him spin around quickly.

“Erik,” Charles says. “What are you doing down here?”

Erik walks over to him, still carrying Lorna, and looks out at what Charles has been watching outside. Hank is arranging targets for a boy who then shoots them with lasers. From his eyes. Erik watches for a moment, mildly fascinated by the sheer destructive power, then tells Charles, with the straightest face he can muster, “Boo is missing.”

Charles stares at him blankly for a moment, then says, “What?”

“Boo," Erik repeats. “We’ve looked everywhere and can’t find him. Whatever he is.”

“Boo…” Charles mutters, then he says to Lorna, “Hank?”

"No, Boo," Lorna says, at that same Erik asks, "Hank?"

Charles looks confused for a moment. "Oh, your teddy," he says, then to Erik, "It's blue."

"Like Hank," Lorna says. "I lost him."

"We can look for him tonight. He can't have gone far," Charles says.

She sighs, rather dramatically, then starts squirming in Erik's arms until he sets her down. She reaches for Charles, hand grasping at his jeans, and asks, “Can I go play?”

Charles looks over at Hank and the kids and says, “For a few minutes, then you _do_ have to go take a nap, Boo or no Boo. Just stay clear of Scott; he doesn’t aim very well yet.”

Lorna runs out to join the group, leaving Erik and Charles relatively alone on the wide porch that overlooks the backyard.

"I think she was just saying that to avoid a nap," Erik says.

"Oh, I'm sure she was," Charles tells him with a smirk. "She hasn't carried that toy around in months; she's obsessed with barbie now. You just fell for it hook, line, and sinker."

Erik sinks down onto one of the steps, resting his elbows on his knees, and says, “She’s downright sneaky when she wants to be.”

Charles sits next to him, still looking out at the kids. “I can’t imagine where she gets that from.”

_You_ , Erik thinks. Out loud he says, “So this is where you’ve been hiding all your students? I didn’t even know this part of the house existed.”

“Ah, yes. This used to be servants quarters.” Charles twists around to gesture back at the open kitchen door. “There are bedrooms, the kitchen, a couple of sitting rooms. It’s a bit apart from the other living areas of the house, so it seemed like a good spot to start having them stay. That way they don’t feel quite so much like they’re living with their teachers.”

“You had servants?” Erik asks. He not sure why he’s surprised, with a house this size, but the concept is still foreign to him.

Charles frowns. “Not really by the time I lived here. Just the housekeeper, cook, and nanny. There might’ve been a butler.” Charles frowns at the look Erik knows is on his own face. “What did you expect? My mother was hardly going to do any of those things herself when she could hire someone to do it.”

“It’s just odd, thinking about having servants for anything,” Erik says.

“Best not to think about the groundskeeper then. He comes once a month.”

“Hmm,” Erik says, trying to think of a way to change the subject. He settles on asking, “Why aren’t you out helping with the kids?”

Charles leans forward, elbows on his knees. “They don’t really need me to help with target practice. Hank’s able to dodge out of the way faster.”

“I remember you did that with Havoc though, when he was training.” Erik remembers because he’d wanted to shake Charles for being stupid enough to stand in the line of fire, whether it had turned out fine or not. The boy with lasers for eyes looks like he has a similar power.

“That was different. I could see the insecurities that were blocking him and what he needed to work past them so I could guide him from there. Without”--he makes a vague gesture towards his head--”I can’t really do that.”

“So stop blocking your powers,” Erik says. He’s still confused as to when and why Charles started blocking them again in the first place, but from what he’s gathered it’s been that way for quite some time now.

Charles shoots him an annoyed look. “It’s not that simple, Erik.”

Erik leans back, resting his elbows on the step behind him and nearly sprawling across the stairs. “Explain it to me then. Why did you start blocking them again?”

Charles won’t look at him. His gaze is locked on the group of kids, and Erik looks over to see that the target practice has turned into general messing around, with Hank at the middle of it looking slightly overwhelmed. Erik waits him out, and eventually Charles says, “I had to start taking the serum again when I was pregnant. There were too many complications.”

Which, of all the guesses Erik had, is not what he was expecting to hear. The first time, Charles had said it was something to do with sleeping and Erik honestly hadn’t dug any deeper for a reason since he was sure it couldn’t be good enough to justify doing it. “What kind of complications?” he asks.

“The kind that come from being a paraplegic,” Charles says, his tone just on the edge of being sarcastic. 

Charles doesn’t say anything else and Erik is tempted to just let the conversation drop, but the part of him that never lets anything go when he knows something is _wrong_ won’t let him. “If it was because of the pregnancy, then why are you still using it? You don’t need it anymore.”

Charles turns to face him, looking a bit angry that Erik’s even asked. “Because it’s no better now than it was then. Have you ever tried taking care of a baby while in a wheelchair?”

“Have you?” Erik retorts.

“That is not the point--”

“I think it is,” Erik interrupts. “I’m sure it’s not easy but it’s not easy for anyone, able-bodied or not.” He tilts his head and adds, tone carefully blasé, “But then I wouldn’t know, would I?”

Charles looks away, breathing heavily, fists clenched where they rest against his knees. He doesn’t look at Erik as he stands and says, “You need to go before the children come back in.”

Erik pushes himself back up to his own feet. “Fine,” he says, leaving.

Erik feels perfectly justified in what he does next.

\---

He winds up in Charles’ room again that evening for much angrier sex than they'd had the other night. Erik knows Charles well enough to know when he’s trying to prove a point, and the way he spends the evening manhandling Erik and leaving small bruises across his hips and thighs gets it across well enough. Not that Erik is protesting much.

It still doesn’t stop Erik from waiting until he’s certain Charles is downstairs the next morning before he starts searching through Charles’ room for the serum. It’s only hard to find because Erik’s not exactly sure what he’s looking for--he’s never actually seen either Charles or Hank take the stuff before--but the small box of vials and syringes he finds tucked inside the drawer of end table look about right.

Erik retreats back to his own bathroom where he uncaps the vials and pours them down the drain, one by one. The yellow liquid is thick and sticks to the sides of the sink. Charles is lucky he didn't wind up as blue teddy bear like Hank, knowing how Hank's other experiments have turned out.

_This is for his own good_ , Erik reminds himself, when the thought occurs to him that he might be ruining things with Charles just when they’ve started going well again. Charles will see that, eventually. He always does.

The second part of his plan involves finding Hank’s stash of the serum and destroying it as well. This proves more difficult, since Hank’s lab is an absolute mess of substances that might or might not be hazardous, but Erik does eventually find the same vials and dumps all of them out as well. It’s possible that Hank has more somewhere, certain even, but Erik decides that can wait.

It’s not even dinnertime yet before Charles finds it missing.

Charles pokes his head into the study, where Erik is pretending to read but is really watching Lorna draw in a coloring book, and asks, “Have you seen Hank?”

“No, sorry,” Erik says. Charles looks anxious, so he asks, “What’s wrong?"

“Ah, nothing for you to worry about. He’s just not in his lab.” Charles looks around the room like he thinks Hank might pop out from behind a bookshelf, then says, “If you see him, will you let him know I need to talk to him?”

Erik lets his book fall shut on his lap, frowning. “Do you need help looking for him?”

Charles looks away for a moment, back down the hall, then back to Erik. “Possibly. I just need…” He sighs, running a hand through his hair. “I’m sure he’ll be back for dinner.”

Hank isn't back for dinner either, and eventually Charles finds a note that's been stuck to refrigerator all this time that says Hank's gone out and won't be back until late.

If Erik thought Charles was anxious before, it's nothing compared to how he is through dinner. He keeps fidgeting, and eventually sends Erik to put Lorna to bed while he retreats to his study with a bottle of scotch.

"What's wrong?" Erik asks, when he joins Charles downstairs.

Charles is refilling his glass and he takes another drink before answering, "I'm out of serum and it's wearing off." He rubs at his forehead almost absentmindedly. "I don't know where Hank keeps the extras."

"You mean the vials in his lab?" Erik asks.

Charles looks up, and for a moment his expression is almost hopeful. "You know where they are?" There's a long pause, and Erik just holds his gaze steadily and watches the comprehension dawning on Charles' face. "What did you do?" he asks. "Erik, what did you..."

"You don't need it," Erik says. If anything, Charles behavior tonight has increased Erik's resolve to get him to stop taking the damn stuff. He's acting like an addict in desperate need of a hit.

Charles looks halfway between horrified and angry. "What did you do?" he asks again, voice barely a whisper.

Erik crosses his arms. "I dumped it all out. Including what I could find in Hank's lab. You don't need to take it, Charles. What you need is to have your powers. To be what you're meant be."

"What I'm..." Charles is looking at him incredulously. "What I need is the bloody serum!" He's on his feet, stomping towards Erik, but halfway there his body jerks and he falls to his knees with a pained cry.

Erik's at his side in an instant, kneeling in front of Charles and taking ahold of his arms. Charles grasps at Erik's shirt. "I need the serum, Erik. I need..." He squints his eyes, one hand coming up to pull at his own hair.

Erik grabs Charles' wrist to pull his hand away before he hurts himself. "You don't need it," he says again, gently. "I know you think you do, but you don't." Charles eyes are wet with unshed tears, the first time Erik's seen him even close to crying despite everything that's happened the past couple weeks.

Charles pounds his fists against Erik's chest weakly. "Yes I do. I do. Everything hurts."

"It'll be okay," Erik soothes. He knows it will. It has to be.

Charles hits him harder, then goes back to clutching at his head. "It's too loud," he says.

Erik runs his own hands into Charles hair, massaging as he goes, and pulls Charles forward a bit to press a kiss against his forehead. "You'll be okay."

Charles shakes his head, but doesn't try to dislodge Erik's hold on him. "No."

This is, of course, when Hank walks in. He looks between Erik and Charles and asks, "What's going on?"

Charles pulls away from Erik. He’s gritting his teeth, eyes still damp with angry tears, as he says, "Erik decided I didn't need to take the serum anymore."

"He... What?" Hank asks.

"And unless you've got some hidden away, then he's destroyed everything that was in the house," Charles adds.

Hank looks at Erik incredulously, then spins around and practically runs out of the room. “I’ll be right back,” he calls over his shoulder.

Charles pushes Erik away from him again and this time Erik lets him go. Hank returns with a vial of the yellow liquid in his hands. “I’ve only got one left,” he says, kneeling down in front of Charles and offering it up. He ignores Erik as he adds, “It’ll take another week and a half to make more.”

Charles takes the vial in his hand, staring at it closely.

“It won’t last more than a day,” Hank says.

“I know,” Charles says, still staring at it. He eventually looks up and hands it back to Hank. His voice is incredibly weary as he says, “Hold on to it, just in case.”

“You’re sure?” Hank asks, already pocketing the vial.

Charles nods. He reaches out a hand to Hank and says, “Help me up.”

Erik reaches forward to help too, but Charles levels him with a glare and Erik backs off, hands slightly raised.

“I don’t even know where my fucking chair is,” Charles says.

“In the closet.” Hank indicates the other end of the room with a tilt of his head, and says to Erik, “Make yourself useful for once.”

Erik glares at him but does as he’s told. When he opens the door Hank indicated there is indeed a wheelchair tucked back into the corner, half hidden behind suit jackets that look like they're a decade old. He pulls it out of the closet with his powers and levitates it over next to Charles.

After helping Charles, Hank turns on Erik. He’s angry enough that he’s turning blue around the edges and Erik takes a step back as Hank gets in his face, grabbing ahold of his shirt and practically shaking him. “What the hell were you thinking?”

"Neither of you should be taking it," Erik says, pushing Hank off. "None of us should be _hiding_ from the humans."

"I'll be upstairs," Charles says, before either Hank or Erik can keep going. "That is if the bloody elevator's still working." He backs the chair up, swears when he knocks into an end table, and then heads for the door. He pauses long enough to wave a hand towards Erik and say, "Don't you dare follow me."

Erik, who had started to do just that, stops in his tracks. Hank follows after Charles, leaving Erik standing alone in the middle of the study.

He did the right thing, he reminds himself. He just hadn't anticipated how severe Charles' withdrawal symptoms would be. Or how angry he’d be about it. Or how much actually seeing him in the chair would feel like being punched in the gut.

\---

Erik’s known about the chair for a decade and a half now, but he’s rarely actually seen Charles use it before. He had only seen Charles once between the fight with Shaw and going to prison, and that had been from quite a distance. Then, when Charles had broken him out ten years later, he’d been walking. He must have been using the chair in Washington, since he’d had his powers, but Erik honestly hadn’t paid attention. Which means that, aside from last night, he’s only seen Charles using the chair once before. He’d known that taking away from the serum wouldn’t just mean that Charles had his powers again, it would mean that he couldn’t walk either, but opening his bedroom door the next morning to find Charles sitting in the chair, glaring up at him, slams it home.

“Come with me,” Charles says, voice firm and mouth set into a grim line. He turns to go back down the hallway, leaving Erik to follow. The chair is like a flare in Erik’s mind, made almost entirely of metal. He can feel every screw and bolt, the gears moving as Charles pushes it forward.

Charles leads Erik into Lorna's nursery where he says, "Erik, Lorna would like to know why I can't walk. I thought you could explain it to her,” then he spins the chair around in a surprisingly smooth 180 and leaves the room.

Erik watches him go, then looks back down at Lorna’s confused expression. He has no idea what to say.

\---

Erik tries to talk to Charles later, but every time he enters the same room Charles makes a hasty retreat. He finally corners him in one of the sitting rooms and holds Charles' chair in place with his powers when he tries to leave again.

Charles looks positively incensed at him. "Let go, Erik."

"We need to talk," Erik says. He blinks, and Charles is gone. After a moment of confusion, Erik can sense the chair halfway down the hall and runs out after him. "Charles, wait. What did you do to me?"

Charles doesn't even turn to look at him. "If you're going to use your powers against me then two can play at that game. Would you like to spend the rest of the night thinking you're a five year old girl? That could be arranged. I'm sure Lorna would love having a playmate."

"I'd like to talk like civilized adults, or is that too much to ask?" Erik says

Charles spins around, the look on his face stopping Erik in his tracks. "You mean like we _talked_ before you destroyed all the serum?"

"Charles..."

"Don't," Charles says. "You don't get to just make decisions for me, Erik, and I'm not going to sit here and listen to you try to justify it. It's _my_ choice. And I don't give a fuck what you think of it."

Erik very carefully doesn't mention that Charles is one who goes around making major life decisions for other people, like whether or not they should know they have a child. He wants to say it, desperately, and the words are on the tip of his tongue, but instead he says, "So you're just waiting for Hank to make some more of the serum to use."

Charles's knuckles are almost white on the arms of his chair. "I haven't decided yet," he says. "But it's none of your business."

"It is," Erik argues. "Lorna didn't even know that you had powers. Is this what you want to teach our kind? That they should be ashamed and hide? Is that what you want to teach our daughter?"

"That's not why I did it!" Charles yells. "Not everything is about 'our kind' or mutant rights or the goddamn war you keep trying to start."

"Then explain it to me," Erik says, gesturing with his palms up. "Because I don't understand how you can just cut off part of what makes you _you_ and act like it doesn't matter."

"I told you why I had to take it already, you just never fucking listen." Charles is practically snarling at him. "Lorna would have _died_ if I hadn't."

"That doesn't explain why you kept taking it after she was born," Erik says.

"I don't have to explain everything I do to you," Charles says.

"Fine, don't then. Explain it to Lorna," Erik says, turning Charles' own trick from this morning back on him.

Charles shakes his head and turns to leave, holding a hand up when Erik starts to follow him. "Don't, Erik. Just... don't."

\---

When Hank makes more of the serum, Erik fully expects Charles to start using it again. He's spent the past couple days, during which Charles has refused to speak to him unless it concerns Lorna, thinking of other tactics he could use to convince Charles that Erik is right. Short of finding another hairy, time traveling asshole--which is the only thing that's ever managed to convince Charles that Erik was right in the past--he's not sure what to try. Talking, maybe, but Charles won't listen. He could destroy the serum again, but Hank will just make more. He could get rid of Hank, but Charles would probably never forgive him for that.

Erik also expects for Charles to tell him to fuck off when he finally knocks on his bedroom door again, but instead Charles calls for him to come in. When he opens the door Charles is sitting on the edge of the bed. He watches silently as Erik closes the door behind him.

"Come to tell me all the things I'm doing wrong in my life?" Charles asks wearily.

"Is that what you want?" Erik asks.

"No," Charles says. "I'm sick of arguing with you."

Erik's tired of it too. It feels like all they've done for the past month is fight about one thing or another, and while generally it's that passion and intensity that has kept Erik from ever being able to move on from Charles, it's also draining to keep up all the time.

"Then no," he says.

Charles just looks at him for a long moment--long enough that Erik starts to wonder if Charles is reading his thoughts, picking through his brain for all the things he tries to keep hidden, making him wish he hadn't left that helmet behind in D.C., it could be anywhere now--then he says, "Good."

Erik stays where he is, leaning against the door, until Charles asks, "Are you just going to stand there all night or are we going to fuck?”

Erik’s across the room before Charles has finished speaking. Charles grabs his collar--it bites into the back of Erik's neck sharply--to pulls him down into a kiss. Erik nudges Charles' knees apart with one of his own to press in closer, balancing his hands on either side of Charles' hips. He pulls back just enough to say, "You'll have to tell me what to do."

"You mean you're actually going to do what I tell you for once?" Charles asks, hands already working on the buttons of Erik's shirt.

The bedroom is the one place Erik's always done what Charles tells him to because Charles is the bossiest person ever in bed, but he doesn't point that out now. "If you ask nicely," he says.

Charles lets out a small laugh, breath warm on Erik's cheek, and says, "Pretty please," before kissing him again.

It's different, and Erik feels a bit like he's fumbling in the dark trying to find out what Charles likes and what works and what doesn't, but true to his word Charles has no trouble telling him where to touch and how hard and when to just fucking get on with it already, he's not going to break dammit.

When they're lying tangled together later, Erik's head pillowed on Charles' stomach, Erik finally asks, "What made you change your mind?"

"Hmm?" Charles says, stirring a bit under him.

"Why didn't you start taking the serum again? I thought you would, once Hank was finished with it." Erik props himself up on his arms so he can look at Charles' face. 

Charles isn’t looking at him, gaze locked on the ceiling. “I don’t know,” he says. 


	6. Charles, part three

The thing is, Charles knows exactly why he hasn't taken the serum again. He can remember why he took it the first time, before he and Hank knew it would affect his powers so severely, when they thought it would just fix his legs, and he knows why he quit then--Logan's belief that Charles could fix everything had just been so strong that it made him want to try and do better, to deserve that kind of loyalty and allegiance. He doesn't regret taking it again, not when he has Lorna, happy and healthy, to show for it.

But Charles has been taking it since before she was born, so he's never seen her mind. Everyone's mind is different. Raven's was always a shifting landscape of emotion, more tumultuous than her appearance ever was, while Erik's is sharp like barbed wire, everything separated into neat categories and hidden away. Hank’s is more cluttered than even his lab, everything he’s ever seen or read stuffed into one place.

He wonders, sometimes, what his own mind looks like. The only other telepath he’s ever met, Emma Frost, had a mind like a glacier, icy and impenetrable and running roughshod over everything in its path without a care for the damage left behind.

Lorna's mind is like an unseasonably warm day in the middle of winter, bright and sunny and inviting one outdoors after months spent in the cold and dark. Charles doesn't think he can give it up, not even to block out the pain and heartbreak from the rest of the world. Not even to walk again. Dealing with all the pain is worth having a glimpse of her.

He's still angry with Erik--Erik's methods have always left something to be desired--but Charles also feels resigned to that anger. He's been angry at Erik for over a decade. Being angry with him doesn't change anything. Being angry with him is _exhausting_ and Charles is tired of it.

Charles kicks Erik out of bed early the next morning. "Get up," he says. “You need to leave.”

"Good morning to you too," Erik mumbles, still half asleep.

Charles shoves at his shoulder, pushing as hard as he can manage without sitting up himself. "I mean it."

Erik rolls over with a groan and looks at Charles. "What's the rush? It's Saturday, I know you don't have classes."

"I need to get up and shower," Charles says.

Erik looks at him blankly. "Okay..."

Charles sighs, exasperated. His morning routine is exponentially longer and more complicated without the serum, and he'd rather Erik not be here for it. He shoves again. "I'm serious, go back to your own room."

Erik grumbles but does as he's told, hunting around the room for his pants and then stomping out the door. It closes behind him with a bang--another dramatic exit, Erik should really patent those--and Charles flops back down onto the mattress, staring at the ceiling for a minute before he gets started pulling his chair closer so he can get out of bed.

\---

Charles is surprised by how much Lorna doesn't seem phased by the chair. She's confused the first day--Charles wonders what Erik told her, but not enough to ask or go looking for the answer--but then seems to think it's fun. She keeps climbing up the side to get onto Charles' lap. She runs over to do so as soon as he gets to the kitchen for breakfast, saying, "Daddy, Erik said we can go to the zoo if you say it's okay. Can we go? Please? I want to see the giraffes."

Charles looks at Erik over her head. "He did, did he?"

"And the elephants and the lions and tigers and--"

Lorna's still listing out all the animals she wants to see while Erik shrugs and asks, "Was I supposed to say no? We don't have to go."

"Yes we do!" Lorna says. "Please Daddy. Pretty please? I'll be really good. Can Erik come too?"

Charles closes his eyes for a moment. He wants to be upset with Erik for not asking first before making promises, but part of having his powers back is that he can see just how desperately Erik wants Lorna to like him. It makes sense that he's turned that into never telling her no. About anything, apparently, even a spontaneous trip to the zoo.

Lorna's still begging and bargaining--she's promised to clean her room too if they can go--so Charles finally says, "Alright," and smiles at her excited cheer even as he dreads going into the city. He's got to leave the house at some point, he supposes.

Charles nudges Lorna off his lap so he can get breakfast and she goes back to her cereal enthusiastically. "Can we ride the train too?" she asks.

"No," Charles says firmly, before Erik can tell her yes. There is no way in hell he's going on the subway with a wheelchair. "No subway."

Lorna pouts, but get over it quickly as she starts talking about all the animals again. 

After Charles sends her upstairs to get dressed, Erik says, "We really don't have to go, if you don't want to."

"It's not that," Charles says with a sigh. "And I can hardly go back and say no now. I'd never hear the end of it. But you need to learn not to just tell her yes all the time. She's already running roughshod over you."

Erik shrugs. "I don't mind."

"You will when she realizes she can get away with anything," Charles says. "I really should get some of the serum from Hank, if we're going out today." He's been trying to avoid it, since he's not sure if he can stop once he takes it again. The quiet it provides is addictive, more so than any drugs he's ever tried. It's just... easier, with the serum. Less things to worry about when he only has his own thoughts to contend with, and not everyone else's. It's not too bad here at the house, with the nearest town miles away, but New York City and its millions of people have always been a bit of a challenge for him to block out.

"Why?" Erik asks, looking suspicious.

"Because it's not exactly easy to go into the city," Charles says. "The curbs alone are a pain in the ass," he adds, blaming his reluctance on the chair instead of his own insecurities.

"I could always levitate you," Erik says.

Charles thinks about that, imagines it a moment--Erik floating him several meters above the heads of the other pedestrians--and is a bit horrified. "How about not," he says.

“Suit yourself,” Erik says, with a small quick of his lips. “Where is the zoo anyway?”

\---

The closest zoo is in the Bronx Zoo, which is still an hour away. Hank looks at Charles like he’s insane when he tells him where they’re going, but doesn’t say anything about it aside from “Have fun.”

They are, actually, having fun. Or Lorna is, at any rate, and that's enough to make the entire outing worth it. Erik's quiet, walking alongside Charles as they follow Lorna from enclosure to enclosure and only helping when asked. Charles takes a peek at what he's thinking and finds that Erik's never been to a zoo before. Which is surprising, until Charles spends more than a second thinking about it. He nudges Erik's arm, drawing a confused look, and asks, "Enjoying yourself?"

“Lorna’s having fun,” Erik says.

“Yes, but I asked about you.”

“Then yes, I’m having fun too,” Erik says with a smile.

Lorna's standing on tiptoe at the wall surrounding the sea lions, jumping a bit, and complains, "I can't see, Daddy."

Erik leans down and lift her under her arms until she can stand on the edge, holding on to the back of her overalls as she leans forward so she doesn't tip herself into the enclosure. "What're they doing?" she asks, pointing.

Charles peers over the wall to see what's she's pointing at; two of the sea lions are laying on top of a rock having sex.

"They're, uh... mating," Erik finally says.

"What's mating?" Lorna asks.

Erik looks at Charles, eyes wide and slightly panicked, and it takes everything Charles has not to start laughing at him.

"That's what they do when they want a baby sea lion," Charles explains.

"How long does it take?" Lorna asks.

_Depends on who you’re with_ , Charles thinks. “To have a baby? he asks, making sure that’s what she means.

Lorna nods.

Charles has no idea how long sea lion gestation periods are. "Several months," he says, since that covers anywhere from two to twenty. He thinks briefly of what being pregnant for twenty months would be like and tries not to shudder.

Lorna watches the sea lions thoughtfully, then twists around to look at Erik and asks, "Is that what you and Daddy did to have me?"

Charles, who saw the question coming as soon as she asked what mating was, manages to keep a straight face, barely, but Erik's turning bright red. Erik opens his mouth, searching for an answer, but nothing comes out. "Yes," Charles says, taking pity on him. "We did. Now how about we go find the giraffes."

This proves a sufficient distraction and Erik swings Lorna down off the wall before she tries to jump herself. She runs ahead down the path a bit, then turns around to yell for them to hurry up.

Erik still looks a bit shell shocked from that conversation. "The perils of a trip to the zoo," Charles comments. "Last time she wanted to know why one of the antelopes was eating another one's poop."

Erik frowns. "That disgusting."

"It's actually fairly common, at least for herbivores," Charles says, launching into lecture mode. "The young eat their mother's feces and it helps provide bacteria they need for digestion."

Erik stops walking and stares at him for a moment. "Why do you know that?"

"I'm full of useless scientific factoids," Charles says. "Also I've lived with Hank for far too long. He seems to know everything about anything."

Lorna runs back and starts tugging on the arm of Charles' chair, trying to make him move. "Come on, Daddy. You're going too slow."

They're on a down slope, so Charles lifts Lorna into his lap, holds her in place with one hand, steers with the other, and let's gravity do the rest to send them careening down the path.

\---

By the time they’re done with the zoo and stop to eat on the way home, Charles expects Lorna to be exhausted. Instead she’s still wound up, bouncing around and chattering on loudly about all the animals they’d seen. She's done with her food before anyone else, even though Charles has only been able to get her to eat half of it, and convincing her to sit still is proving impossible. She slides down out of her seat and ducks behind Charles’ chair, trying to climb up the back of it.

Charles can’t twist around far enough to reach her, and she ignores him when he tells her to get down. Erik gets up from his side of the table to pull her off and push her back towards her own seat. “Sit down,” he says mildly.

Lorna sits and goes back to coloring on the back of the paper kids menu. Then she starts playing with the crayons instead of coloring, and manages to send one of the them flying underneath the next table. “I’ll get it,” she says, already scrambling back down and crawling under the table.

Erik goes after her, retrieving the crayon and making her climb back into her seat. “You can’t crawl around on the floor in public,” Erik tells her. “It’s covered in germs.”

Charles reaches over with a napkin to try and clean her up as Lorna says, “Yuck,” and wipes her hands down the front of her overalls.

Charles gives up on the napkin. “Yuck,” he repeats.

There's a woman two tables over staring at them and Erik glares back at her. Charles nudges him mentally, and says aloud, "Stop that."

"She's staring at Lorna."

She staring at Erik now, actually, after having started out staring at Lorna because unruly children are annoying, then wondering which of them was her father, then dismissing Charles as being incapable and assuming it was Erik, then staring at Erik because what kind of parent dyes their child's hair such an outrageous color. On the plus side, she isn’t staring because she thinks they’re gay, but only because the idea hasn’t occurred to her. "She’s staring at you," Charles says. "Stop glaring and giving her a reason to."

Erik grins at the woman instead, which is honestly even more frightening, and she turns away quickly. He turns back to Charles, his smile becoming more genuine, and Charles looks down at the table, fighting a grin of his own.

A few minutes later, Lorna’s up again. This time she’s realized that if she holds onto both their table and the one next to them, she can swing between them. She lifts herself up and starts swinging her legs, kicking the seat of the booth each time she swings back.

Erik looks exasperated as he says, “Lorna, stop it,” and leans over to lift her under the arms and deposit her back in the seat next to him again. 

Charles knows she’s not going to listen when she’s this wound up, but he’s also not willing to give up and leave yet when he’s barely gotten to touch his own food. When she gets up again a couple minutes later she goes right back to the swinging thing--this time disturbing the people who’ve just been seated next to them--and Erik has apparently had enough. He grabs the straps on the back of her overalls and jerks her back into her seat. She lands with an oof. “Sit still,” Erik says sharply, shaking her lightly for good measure.

Lorna’s eyes well up with tears and Erik looks like a deer caught in the headlights. Before Erik can do something like apologize for scolding her, Charles leans across the table. “Lorna, if you’re going to misbehave and cry then we won’t be able to go to the zoo again,” he tells her.

“Ever?” she asks incredulously.

“Ever,” Charles confirms solemnly.

“But Erik’s mean,” Lorna says.

“Erik’s not mean,” Charles says. “You should have listened when he told you to stop the first time.”

Lorna’s whining now. “But I’m _bored_. I wanna go back to the zoo.” She crosses her arms, slouching back in her chair.

“We’re done with the zoo,” Charles says. Lorna only pouts harder at that, lower lip stuck out almost comically as she glowers down at the tabletop. Charles sighs and decides that he’ll just eat later at home. “Come on, let’s go.” He pulls out enough cash to cover their meals and throws it onto the table along with his napkin.

“We haven’t finished eating,” Erik says.

“There’s plenty at the house,” Charles says. “Come on, Lorna. Time to go home.” He pushes back from the table and waits for her to get up.

Lorna doesn’t move. “I don’t wanna go home,” she says.

“You should have thought of that before you disobeyed. Let’s go,” Charles says. She still doesn’t move, so he gestures at Erik and tells him mentally, _Come on, she’ll follow us._

Erik stands up, but turns back to his plate to rip his roll in half and stuff his chicken in between, eating his makeshift sandwich quickly as he follows Charles out of the restaurant. Charles doesn’t look back, but by the time they get to the door he hears Lorna running to catch up.

\---

Raven calls one day, but it’s to talk to Erik. “I thought you two weren’t on speaking terms,” Charles says, when she asks for him. Charles reaches out to Erik mentally, just the slightest nudge, careful not to read his thoughts. Charles generally avoids reading Erik as much as possible, aside from the things he shouts so loudly they can’t be ignored.

The line crackles a bit as Raven sighs. “He has a unique set of skills which are helpful enough to outweigh my desire to kick him the balls every time I see him. Not by much, but still. At least he’s useful.”

“Is this another B and E?” Charles asks.

“Do you really want to know?” Raven asks.

“Probably not,” Charles says. “Oh, Erik wants to know if you’re coming home for Thanksgiving,” he says, remembering Erik’s concern about seeing Raven again.

“Why?” Raven asks, voice suspicious. “Oh god, is he going to be there?”

“I have no idea to be honest,” Charles tells her. “He said he would, but it’s Erik.”

“Ugh,” Raven groans. “I guess I can play nice since it’s a holiday. If I get drunk enough to ignore everything he says or does, he’s actually not bad to look at.”

Charles snorts just as Erik walks, and at his questioning look Charles starts laughing. “Here,” he says, holding out the phone. “Raven wants to talk to you.”

Erik takes the phone and says, “Hello Mystique.”

Charles can hear Raven’s voice through the receiver still, but not what she’s saying. Erik turns to look out the window, stepping further away from Charles, and Charles tells him, “Let me know before you hang up on her so I can say goodbye.”

Erik nods, back still turned. Charles heads for the study, which is close enough to the foyer to hear if Erik yells for him but far enough away not to eavesdrop.

After Charles and Raven finally say their goodbyes, Charles turns to Erik and asks, “So, when are you leaving?” The idea that Erik might tell Raven no and stay had crossed Charles’ mind, but he’d dismissed it just as quickly.

“Tomorrow,” Erik says. “It should only take a few days, a week at most.”

“Hmm,” Charles says. He’s learned from experience not to trust that Erik will come back. This is the first time Erik’s offered a timeline of any sort on when to expect him, however. “Are you going to tell me what it is?” he asks.

Erik crosses his arms over his chest, looking at Charles but not meeting his eyes. “A bit of recon at a government facility,” he says. “Nothing major.”

“Which government facility?” Charles asks.

“It’s in Canada,” Erik says.

“So now you’re trying to piss off the Canadian government too?”

“The Americans are too easy to rile up,” Erik says with a grin. “Really, it’ll be a week, tops. Shorter, if we don’t find anything.”

\---

Erik says goodbye to Lorna the next morning, promising to be back soon, and then borrows one of Charles’ cars and heads out. Lorna insists on watching until he’s past the curve of the driveway and can’t be seen any longer.

A week later, Erik doesn’t come back. 

Charles isn’t surprised. He expected this from the start. He’s just disappointed. Mostly for Lorna’s sake, he tells himself, since she obviously misses Erik and has been counting down the week until he gets back, only to have him not show up. This exact situation was one of the reasons Charles hadn’t wanted to let Erik into Lorna’s life in the first place. Erik always leaves, eventually, and now Lorna’s the one suffering for it.

After two weeks have gone by without a single word from Erik, Charles is furious. He has a conversation with Lorna that involves her asking if Erik left because he didn't like her, and after he's done reassuring her and drying her tears he goes down to Cerebro, intent on finding Erik and yelling at him telepathically.

Erik’s nowhere to be found. Neither is Raven, for that matter. Charles thinks for a moment that it must be the helmet, but he’s fairly sure that Erik doesn’t have it anymore. He can’t think of what else would block him from finding them. Unless they’re dead.

Charles spends the next two days wondering how he’d even find out if they were dead. If they were killed on some clandestine mission then it won’t be in the papers. There’s no other way for him to know, unless he goes after them himself and finds evidence. He doesn’t even know where to start. Erik had said they were going to Canada and Charles hadn’t asked for details, hadn’t wanted them, and now he’s regretting that. They’ve both disappeared before, but this is first time Charles has been worried that they were both _dead_.

He can’t tell Lorna, he realizes. She still thinks Erik’s coming back eventually. Yesterday she’d asked if Charles thought it would be okay if she called Erik ‘Papa’ because that’s what Jean said she calls her dad and Charles is already Daddy so Erik can’t be Daddy too because Jean said that was confusing.

Charles wants to bring Erik back just so he can strangle him himself.

\---

It takes Charles a minute to realize that the person coming up the drive is Raven. He hasn’t been in her mind for so long it’s almost completely foreign to him, but once he’s certain he searches nearby. There’s someone else with her, mind slipping through his grasp like water, but it’s not Erik.

Charles is in the middle of teaching the younger students math and dismisses them quickly, heading towards the front door. He shouts for Hank telepathically, and Hank meets him at the door, Lorna trailing after him. When Charles opens the door Raven’s just parked the car they’re driving--not the same one Erik borrowed--and she waves when she spots Charles.

“Hey Charles. Look who we found,” she says, gesturing at the man climbing out of the backseat.

Charles doesn’t even spare him a glance. Erik is getting out of the passenger side, alive and well. Erik is smiling and Lorna has pushed past Hank and is running towards him, yelling “Papa!”

Charles can’t quite make out the look on Erik’s face behind the helmet he’s wearing, but he crouches down to catch Lorna and swing her up into his arms. She’s laughing.

Erik walks over towards the door, stopping a couple steps down from Charles. Like this, they’re of a height with each other, and Charles stares him in the eyes as he asks, “Where did you get that?”

“Get what?” Erik asks.

“That-- the helmet,” Charles says. Erik must have been wearing it, that’s why he couldn’t find him. Erik’s been fine this whole time and Charles was worried over nothing. He should feel relieved, but instead the worry that’s been gnawing at his gut is turning into fresh anger.

“Oh,” Erik says. “Found it again. I thought I’d lost it in Washington.”

Lorna grabs the edge and pulls on it, twisting it around on Erik’s head and bumping one of the points against his nose. Erik winces and reaches up to pull it off. His mind blinks back into existence like a light flicking on.

Charles turns to Raven and the stranger, and realizes that it’s not a stranger at all. “Logan?” he asks.

Logan looks down at him, the cigar in his mouth moving up and down as he works his jaw. “Who’re you?”

“Charles…” Charles answers slowly, watching for any sign of recognition from Logan. There’s none.

Charles glances at Hank, but he only shrugs. “Maybe he doesn’t remember,” Hank says.

Logan snorts. “There are a lot of things I don’t remember, bub. You’ll have to narrow it down.”

“They wiped his memory or something at that facility,” Raven explains.

“Along with giving him a metal skeleton,” Erik adds.

“Metal?” Hank asks.

Logan flexes his hand and extends his claws. The last time Charles had seen him, they’d been bone. Now they’re sleek knives, sharp and deadly.

“That’s… quite fascinating, actually,” Hank says.

Logan shrugs and sheaths his claws again. He jerks his head towards Raven and says, “She said I could crash here. You have any food?”

Hank leads him off to the kitchen. Raven leans down to give Charles a hug. He squeezes tight and says, “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Of course I am,” Raven says, smiling at him before she follows the others.

Erik has set Lorna down and is watching Charles closely. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

“What makes you think anything is wrong?” Charles asks.

Erik sighs, exasperated. “I know it took longer than a week, but I told you it might if we found something.”

“You said a week tops, actually,” Charles reminds him.

“They were experimenting on mutants,” Erik says. “Logan wasn’t the only one there, just the only one still alive.”

Charles takes Lorna by the shoulders and turns her toward the house. “Lorna, why don’t go help Auntie Raven?”

“But--”

“Go on. Erik and I will be there in a minute,” Charles tells her. She pouts, but runs to catch up to Raven.

“You can’t expect me to stop trying to help our kind, Charles,” Erik says. “Someone has to--”

Charles snatches the helmet out of Erik’s hands and, while Erik is still too startled to react, throws it as hard as he can. “I thought you were _dead_ ,” he hisses at Erik.

Erik takes a half step back, eyes wide. “Well, obviously I’m not. What’s brought this on?”

Charles takes a deep breath. He needs to be logical about this. If he lets his emotions get the better of him then Erik will find some way to poke holes at all of Charles’ arguments. He needs facts that Erik can’t deny. “You can’t just come and go from our lives like this, Erik.”

“I came back,” Erik says.

“Yes, this time. And it took you two weeks longer than you said it would.”

“I was--”

“I know what you were doing. It doesn’t change anything,” Charles says. “You left and Lorna thought you weren’t coming back because she had done something wrong.”

Erik frowns. “Well, obviously that’s not true.”

“It sure seems true when you’re four years old.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Erik says.

“I already did,” Charles tells him. “It doesn’t change the fact that you can’t do this to her. If you say you’re going to do something, like come home in a week, you have to actually _do it_. You can’t make promises like that and not keep them.”

“So what? You’re not going to let me see her now?” Erik’s started getting defensive. “You can’t do that.”

Charles sighs. “You’re right, I can’t. Not at this point,” he says. Barring Erik from any contact with Lorna would be even more detrimental to her now. “But you can’t live here and then pick up and leave for weeks at a time with no word. You could have been dead and we never would have known.”

“What do you want from me, Charles?” Erik asks. “I’m trying here.”

“Try harder then.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Erik says. “Do you want me give up everything? Everything I’ve been working for all these years? Just roll over and let them kidnap and experiment on us and sit back idly while they kill us all? You know that’s what’s going to happen. That was the whole point of your messenger from the future.”

Charles doesn’t answer right away, and Erik shakes his head. “I came back,” he says again. “All I wanted to do while I was gone was come back here.” He runs one hand over his head, leaving his hair standing on end. “That’s going to have to be enough. I can’t do anything else.”

Charles crosses his arms, looking past Erik out at the lawn. “I can’t ask you to stop all of… this.” He waves a hand vaguely. “But you have to... I have to know what you’re doing. I have to be able to find you. I tried this time and you were wearing that _fucking_ helmet and I thought for sure you were dead.”

“Okay,” Erik says.

Charles blinks at him. “What?”

“I said, okay,” Erik repeats. “You want to know what I’m doing and you want me to call if something happens and you want me to get rid of the helmet. Okay.”

Charles just stares at him.

“Did I miss anything?” Erik asks.

Charles shakes his head.

“Okay then,” Erik says, straightening his shoulders. “That’s settled then.”

“You…” Charles doesn’t have words right now. Erik _never_ gives in. That’s Erik’s entire modus operandi: don’t give in. Charles has been prepared to keep arguing about this for at least another week before either of them even begin to compromise and now that Erik’s cutting to the chase and agreeing he doesn’t know what to say.

Erik kneels down in front of him, reaching for Charles’ hands where they’ve been fisted against the arms of his chair. He pries Charles’ grip open and wraps his own hands around them. “I want this to work,” he says. “You and me and Lorna. It’s been… good, and I want it to work.” He smirks a bit. “So if you need me to tell you where I’m going and call if I’m going to be home late then I can do that.”

Charles wants to argue with him that it’s more than that, his concerns are _so_ much more serious than Erik’s made them sound, but instead he stares down at their joined hands and Erik gives them a squeeze. “Can we try to make this work, at least?” Erik asks. It’s the most sincere Charles thinks he’s ever seen him.

Charles looks up to meet his eyes. “Okay,” he says. “We can try.”

Erik smiles, and Charles can't help but smile back at him. "She called me Papa," Erik says, voice filled with wonder.

"She did." Charles nods. It's never going to be perfect, he thinks--their relationship thrives on the clash of personalities, the constant give and take of their arguments--but right now, with Erik here with him and their daughter waiting just inside, all of them alive and whole, he thinks maybe they'll be alright.


	7. Epilogue: Hank, part two

Four months later, Charles turns up in Hank's lab bearing lunch. "Erik made paninis," he says, holding out the plate to Hank.

Hank hasn't left the lab all morning and reaches for the sandwich without really looking at it, taking a large bite. It takes a few moments before he's able to say, "Thanks. What brings you down here?"

"Oh, you know..." Charles says, peering at the clutter of the table Hank is currently working at. "Just making sure you ate."

Hank is mid bite when Charles finishes talking, but he sets the sandwich back down, eyeing him suspiciously before asking, "What's going on?"

Charles presses his lips together into a tight line before saying, "I just... um... I need you to..." He keeps trailing off, looking at everything in the room aside from Hank.

"Charles," Hank prompts.

"I need you to, um, run some tests."

Hank has a bad feeling about this. "What kind of tests?" he asks.

"Y'know... to, um..." Charles winces, but then says in a rush, "see if I'm pregnant."

Hank doesn't do anything aside from staring at Charles and blinking for a long time. Finally, he says, "Please tell me you're joking."

"I really would if I could, my friend, but, um... no," Charles says. He's running his hands along the edges of his chair, a nervous habit.

Hank is still staring. "You're serious."

"Yes," Charles says.

" _Again_?"

"Yes." Charles winces, and hurries to add, "I really didn't mean--"

"For Christ's sake, Charles!" Hank yells. He stands up, walks over a set of drawers, and gets out a plastic cup that he tosses to Charles as he stalks back past him. "Pee in the cup," he says, heading towards the door.

"Hank? Where are you going?" Charles turns to follow him out.

"Just pee in the damn cup, Charles."

Hank stops in his own room briefly before searching through the mansion, finding Erik in the kitchen with Lorna. He stalks up him and shoves the box he'd grabbed from his room at Erik's chest. "Do you know what these are?" he asks.

Erik looks down, confused. "Condoms?" he says. It sounds like a question, and Hank's not sure if it's because Erik's never seen them before or because he doesn't know why Hank gave them to him. Hank suspects the former.

"Do you need a demonstration on how to use one?" Hank asks.

"No?" Erik says. It still sounds like a question.

"Then start. Using. Them." Hank punctuates each word with a jab of his finger into Erik's chest. Erik takes a half a step back each time, until the backs of his legs hit the bench at the kitchen table and he drops down onto his ass.

Hank spins around to leave, muttering under his breath, "You two are hopeless."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> David is born six months later. 
> 
> When they find out about Wanda and Pietro, Hank gets to say I told you so.
> 
> \---
> 
> In all seriousness, thank you _so much_ to everyone who read and reviewed and left kudos. Each one means the world to me and makes me grin like an idiot whenever I check my email. This was a lot of fun to write and this fandom has been so very welcoming and encouraging. ♥

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cover for "NEVER WAS THE FANTASY" series](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14210754) by [Monikitaa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Monikitaa/pseuds/Monikitaa)




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